SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 12 March 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 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Hurley, Richard J
(1906-1976) US editor of works mainly aimed at the Young Adult markets. His reprint Anthology Beyond Belief (anth 1966) capably assembles mostly familiar stories by such well-known authors as Isaac Asimov, Clark Ashton Smith and Theodore Sturgeon. [GSt]
Queen
UK pop/rock band comprising singer Freddie Mercury (1946-1991), guitarist Brian May (1947- ), drummer Roger Taylor (1949- ) and bassist John Deacon (1951- ). After rather floridly pompous beginnings, Queen hit the big time with the single "Bohemian Rhapsody" (on their fourth album, A Night at the Opera, 1975), a splendidly inventive and rousing portmanteau song about the battle between demons and angels for a ...
Blackden, Paul
(? - ) UK author of one sf novel, Adam and Eve 2020 A D (1974), set partly in Near Future Yorkshire, though both the destruction of London and New York are described; young Terry and Jackie survive into a very dangerous Post-Holocaust world but it looks as though they will make a go of it (see ...
Gier, Scott G
(1948- ) US author of a military sf series, the Genellan sequence – comprising Genellan: Planetfall (1995), Genellan: In the Shadow of the Moon (1996), Genellan: First Victory (1997) and Genellan: Earth Siege (2005) – in which an First Contact between a gingerly expansionist humanity and a mysterious Alien race called the Ulaggi ends in ...
OMPA
Known usually by its acronym, the Offtrails Magazine Publishers Association (1954-1978 or 1979) was an APA formed in the UK by Kenneth Bulmer and A Vincent Clarke, whose founder members included Chuck Harris. OMPA was modelled on FAPA, and was likewise created to facilitate distribution of Fanzines published by and for ...
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 ...