SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 19 February 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.
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King, Tappan
(1950- ) US editor and author, grandson of Austin Tappan Wright, and married to editor Beth Meacham from 1978; he began publishing solo work of genre interest with "Fearn" in Galaxy for September 1978, and wrote several stories until 1995. With Meacham he wrote Nightshade Book One: Terror, Inc (1976), which is supernatural horror in the Weird Tales ...
Brown, Chester
(1960- ) Canadian creator of Yummy Fur, a fantasy Comic whose stories lurch from one comics Taboo to another: Religion, homosexuality, Vampires, Zombies, masturbation and a full spectrum of bodily excretions. Yummy Fur began life as a series of tiny (A6) self-published pamphlets in the early 1980s. Brown was eventually ...
O'Riordan, Robert
(1943- ) Canadian teacher and author whose Cadre sequence of Space Operas comprising Cadre One (1985), Cadre Lucifer (1987) and Cadre Messiah (1988) follows the career of orphaned space cadet Pol Tryees into adventurous adulthood across the Galactic Empire, which he comes to understand and perhaps to rule. [JC]
St Nicholas Magazine
US magazine for boys and girls, published by Scribner, later by Century Co, then by American Education Press. Founded by Rosewell Smith and edited by Mary Mapes Dodge 1873-1905, William Fayal Clarke 1905-1927, and others. Assistant editors included Frank R Stockton 1873-1881 and Tudor Jenks 1887-1902. It appeared monthly November 1873-May 1930 as St. Nicholas, then as St Nicholas Magazine from June 1930 until its demise in June 1943. The ...
Oxenham, John
Pseudonym of UK lay figure in the Congregationalist Church, poet, editor and author William Arthur Dunkerley (1852-1941); he was co-founder, with Robert Barr of The Idler. Many of his works – some of them now-unread fantasies – served to advance his religious convictions. Two novels are of sf interest: ...
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 ...