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
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Litmus
UK space-rock band, whose only release to date, You Are Here (2004) styles its title and cover-art in homage to Douglas Adams's Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Musically the band is very reminiscent of Hawkwind's expansive and more cosmically evocative style. [AR]
Beason, Doug
(1953- ) US author and officer in the USAF with a PhD in physics who began publishing sf with "The Man I'll Never Be" in Amazing for May 1987. Return to Honor (1989), Assault on Alpha Base (1990) and Strike Eagle (1991) are Technothrillers, but Lifeline (1990) with Kevin J Anderson is of sf interest, and marked both ...
Devlin, Malcolm
Pseudonym of UK illustrator and author Vince Haig (1976- ); Haig has been the partner of Helen Marshall since 2015. As Devlin he began publishing work of genre interest with "Passion Play" in Black Static for issue 28 2014. His work, much of which has been assembled as You Will Grow Into Them (coll 2017), has been restricted to shorter forms, and seems to owe some of its quietly competent generic elusiveness to the ...
Feder, Ben
(1923-2009) US real estate developer, winemaker and illustrator, the last being his first career, his cover work all dating from the 1950s and 1960s. In a manner typical of his era, he specialized in discrete emblematic images floating against neutral backgrounds. Work of interest includes covers for Robert Coover's The Origin of the Brunists (1966), Jack Finney's The Third Level (coll 1957), Robert ...
Haunted Plasma
Finnish metal/rock band, made up of members of various well-known (in limited circles) underground metal bands, in addition to British vocalist Mat McNerney. Their album I (2024) is described by their record label as a "powerhouse of futuristic synth in symbiosis with the super violence of kosmische black metal", which unfortunately makes it sounds more exciting than it is. The lyrics are largely concerned with the usual dystopian future of Big Brother-style ...
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 ...