SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 12 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.
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Ferenczy, Árpád
(1877-circa 1930) Hungarian author of several works in Hungarian, before publishing in German (apparently translated from manuscript by Hans Otto Werda) his sf novel Timotheus Thümmel und seine Ameisen (1923; trans anon as The Ants of Timothy Thümmel 1924), a Satire featuring a race of ants in central Africa whose Intelligence exceeds that of humans, and who engage in a kind of ...
Wigglesworth, Michael
(1631-1705) UK-born preacher, poet and author, in Massachusetts from 1638. Although his book-length narrative poem about the End of the World, The Day of Doom; Or, a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgement (1662), cannot be usefully deemed a work of Proto SF, its vivid narrative unpacking of America's future experience of the Second Coming, as depicted in the Biblical Book of Revelations, became ...
Botten, Bill
(1935- ) UK artist, originally a graphic designer; he then worked as an art director for Sphere Books before turning freelance, at least half of this work – over 100 covers – being for the publisher Jonathan Cape, mostly in the 1970s and early 1980s. His covers for Cape in particular were brightly coloured, sophisticated highly imaginative, and were sometimes infused with surrealistic humour. Noteworthy instances of his approach include his cover for John T ...
Girod, Gary
(1990- ) US author whose first work of sf interest is a novella, The Last Pet Shop in Belfast (2012 ebook), set in a Dystopian Near Future Belfast after an unspecified apocalypse (but see Climate Change; Post-Holocaust); the protagonist's loss of Belfast's last dog is treated with some emblematic force. Girod's first full ...
Stanford, J K
(1892-1971) UK civil servant, solider and author, in active service during World War One. Most of his fiction is humorous, including his first book, The Twelfth (1944 chap; vt The Twelfth and After: Being the Life and Death of George Hysteron-Proteron 1964), a spoofish fantasy whose hunter protagonist is turned into a bird, and organizes his new kin to avoid being shot. His sf Satire, ...
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 ...