SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 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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Carpozi, George, Jr
(1920-2000) US journalist, author of more than 80 books of show-business biography and other nonfiction. His sf venture is Sunstrike (1978), in which a disturbance to the Sun generates a Disaster on Earth. [JC]
Rutherford, Meg
(1932-2006) Australian sculptor, illustrator and author, in UK at least intermittently from 1958; she is of some sf interest for The Beautiful Island (graph 1969), which is collage-based. The narrative is ostensibly pure fantasy – birds persuade the battered houses and edifices of northern lands to migrate south to a paradisal Island – but uses proto-Steampunk devices literally to carry the tale, for the ...
Superpowers
This thematic term is chiefly associated with Comics, but the concept is widespread in general sf. Numerous Superheroes are effectively defined by their superpowers and, very often, corresponding weaknesses. Superman, a major twentieth-century archetype, has a large (though varying with character rewrites) assortment of special powers supposedly resulting from his ...
Miller, William Amos
(circa 1875-? ) UK-born author, in USA from childhood, who briefly describes his experience of being both blind and deaf in the preface to his Utopia, The Sovereign Guide: A Tale of Eden (1898), whose San Francisco-based protagonist, on a visit to Rome, is taken by an angel to a Magnet-powered submarine which conducts him downwards into the Hollow Earth. Here he ...
Bjerke, Tore
(1942- ) Norwegian amateur astronomer and author of realistic sf dealing with Space Flight. He did not write many books, but Rendezvous (1970) in particular was one of the notable astronomically correct novels of the 1970s. More or less forgotten today, it was announced as "a thriller in the international diplomatic environment" – not regarded as sf by the publisher, although it clearly was. ...
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 ...