SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 14 February 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 11 February 2025
Sponsor of the day: Glasgow 2024 (Worldcon)
Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Oshikawa Shunrō
Pseudonym of Japanese author Masa'ari Oshikawa (1876-1914), whose Young Adult tales of aristocratic heroes, oceanic Robinsonades and plucky inventors were a crucial element of the Japanese zeitgeist in the Edwardian era. / Oshikawa's stories were leavened with speculative machinery, soaring martial fervour, and a sense of Japan's manifest destiny (see Imperialism). His ...
Authentic Science Fiction
UK magazine. 85 issues, 1 January 1951 to October 1957, published by Hamilton & Co, Stafford, fortnightly to #8 then monthly, issues numbered consecutively, no volume numbers; edited by L G Holmes (Gordon Landsborough) (January 1951-November 1952), H J Campbell (December 1952-January 1956) and E C Tubb (February 1956-October 1957). Pocketbook-size January 1951-February 1957, Digest-size March-October ...
Dennō Coil
["Cyber Coil"] Japanese animated tv series (2007). Madhouse, NHK-E. Directed by Mitsuo Iso. Written by Toshiki Inoue. Cast includes Fumiko Orikasa. 26 episodes of 25 minutes. Colour. / In the year 2026, schoolgirl Yūko Okonogi (Orikasa) moves with her family to Daikoku, a city with a hybrid function as both a real-world conurbation and a manifestation of the Internet. Residents of Daikoku can ...
Glossop, Reginald
(1880-1955) UK author, long resident in France, whose The Coming Invasion!: How It May Be Prevented (1910 chap), is an unalarming Future War tract; he also wrote a few stories for Boys' Papers in the 1920s. Glossop is remembered almost exclusively for The Orphan of Space: A Tale of Downfall (1926), which lamely prefigures C S Lewis's Ransom trilogy in the conceit ...
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 ...