SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 2025
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 7 July 2025
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Doyle, Richard
(1948-2017) UK author whose Near Future Disaster tale, Deluge (1976), drowns London in time-honoured fashion, as does Flood (2002), although the two are different stories based around the identical premise of storms causing a tidal surge that wrecks the east coast and overwhelms the London Barrier. [JC/SH]
Carr, Terry
(1937-1987) US author and editor; married to Carol Carr from 1961 until his death. He became an sf fan in 1949 and, throughout the 1950s (and later), enjoyed a long and prolific career as such; one of his Fanzines, Fanac, co-edited with Ron Ellik, won a Hugo in 1959, and Carr eventually won his second Hugo as Best Fan Writer in 1973. Some of this writing ...
Shaw, W J
(? -? ) US author of a Hollow Earth tale, Under the Auroras: A Marvellous Tale of the Interior World by an American Author, Playwright, and Journalist (1888; vt Cresten, Queen of the Toitus; Or, Under the Auroras 1892 as W J Shaw). Within the double narrative frame – the real protagonist, Amos Jackson, tells an unnamed interlocutor the story of his adventures – a Symmesian inner world ...
Godsfire
Board and counter Wargame (1976). Metagaming Concepts. Designed by Lynn Willis. / Godsfire is a simulation of strategic warfare between the governments of fifteen solar systems in an isolated galactic cluster. The background has a strong Hard SF flavour; notably, most of the game's Starships are restricted to Sublight speeds, despite their use of such exotic ...
Crawley, Rayburn
Pseudonym of US authors Laura Spencer Portor Pope (1872-1957) and Dorothy Giles (? -? ) for their Yellow Ape sequence, comprising The Valley of Creeping Men (1930) and Chattering Gods (1931), in which two young women – along with the man they both love, and mysterious figures associated with Dr Sergius Marakoff, the Mad Scientist father of one of the girls – find themselves ...
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 ...