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Monday 13 April 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 13 April 2026
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Startopia
Videogame (2001). Mucky Foot Productions. Platforms: Win. / Startopia is a God Game set on a series of derelict space stations which the player must rebuild after an interstellar war. The developers had previously been part of Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog Productions (BP), and the design is much influenced by such non sf Molyneux games as ...
Mannheim, Karl
Pseudonym of the unidentified UK author (? - ) of two sf Space Operas forming the short Venus series: When the Earth Died (1950) and Vampires of Venus (1950). They are modestly competent but hasty. [JC]
Blumenfeld, F Yorick
(1932-2024) Dutch-born journalist and author, in the US from 1941, in New Zealand during the 1960s, and in the UK from 1969; son of the German artist and photographer Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969), about whom he wrote The Naked and the Veiled: The Photographic Nudes of Erwin Blumenfeld (1999). His first sf novel, Jenny Ewing: My Diary (1981 chap; vt Jenny: My Diary 1982 chap) as by Jenny Ewing offers an exceedingly grim ...
Shinkai Makoto
Pseudonym of Makoto Niitsu (1973- ), a Japanese writer and animator who uses sf tropes as metaphors for the emotional distance between individuals. His short film Hoshi no Koe (2002; vt Voices of a Distant Star, 2004 US) draws on Top o Nerae, with Relativity delaying the Communications sent by phone from a teenage military pilot to her ageing ...
Hahn, Charles Curtz
(1858-1938) US priest (deposed in 1884), religious poet and author whose The Wreck of the South Pole; Or, the Great Dissembler and Other Strange Tales (coll 1899) contains mainly the title novella, about a Lost Race at the South Pole with Telepathic powers and advanced technology; plans to "wrench" the pole, thus changing the world's climate, do not bear fruit. The remaining stories are fantasy. [JC]
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...