SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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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Aubrey, Frank
The first and main pseudonym of UK civil engineer and author Francis Henry Atkins (1847-1927), who contributed widely to the pre-sf Pulp magazines, writing at least three Lost-World novels along with much else. The first and most successful of the three was The Devil Tree of El Dorado: A Romance of British Guiana (1896), which capitalized on the contemporary interest in the Roraima Plateau lying athwart the disputed border ...
Slingshot Ending
A term initially used by Kim Stanley Robinson when attempting to describe the typical ending of a Gene Wolfe tale. The Book of the New Sun (1980-1983 4vols), There Are Doors (1988) and Exodus from the Long Sun (1996) all close as their protagonists begin to move towards a goal which has been anticipated from the beginning. But they move out of frame, out of the end of the book, ...
Baraniecki, Marek
(1954- ) Polish environmental engineer, journalist and author, who began publishing work of genre interest with "Karlgoro, godzina 18" ["Karlgoro, 6 p.m."] in Fantastyka for January 1983, stylistically rather conventional and plain but conceptually an invigorating meditation on the power of human spirit and mind versus chaos. The story involves a group of military mentalists supervised by a spiritual guru of incredible powers ...
Tolstoy, Alexei
(1883-1945) Russian author, sometimes mistakenly thought to have been a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910); he was not in fact a blood relative of the famous Tolstoy, though his mother's second husband was related, and gave Tolstoy his surname. Tolstoy is best known for two books whose first versions appeared in the experimental 1920s and both of which were revised in the decade of terror which followed. Aelita (first version #6 1922-#1-2 1923 Krasnaya Nov' as "Aelita ...
Coleman, Loren
(1947- ) US author whose works run a Fortean (see Charles Fort) gamut from cryptozoology to UFO studies. He is listed here primarily to distinguish him from his near-namesake, Loren L Coleman. [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 ...