SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 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.
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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Shea, Cornelius
(1863-1920) US author for the silent screen and author of dime novels (see Dime-Novel SF), prolific in many categories but best remembered for marvel stories using a fairly consistent "mythology" of dwarfs, subterranean eruptions, and stage illusion masquerading as supernatural magic. His first tale of sf interest seems to be The Air Voyagers; Or, a Trip to the Moon in a Balloon: A Tale of Wonderful Adventure (1880 chap), which may have been ...
Paterson, Don
(1963- ) Scottish academic, editor, musician, composer and author, active from the late 1980s. His Poetry, which has been assembled in several collections beginning with Nil Nil (coll 1993 chap), is vigorous, formally inventive, various. Of specific sf interest is Zonal (coll of linked poems 2020 chap), a set of explorations into something like autobiography through the lenses of ...
Williams, Michael Lindsay
(1940- ) US author who published the two volume Mars sequence comprising Martian Spring (1986) and FTL: Further Than Life (1987), which tackles conflicts between Earth and Mars, and consequent attempts to transcend these ills by gaining rapport with a transplanetary group mind; verve and clarity are lacking. / Williams should not be confused with the Michael Williams involved in various DragonLance ...
X-Files and Other Eerie TV, The
US letter-size saddle-stapled Media Magazine printed on a mix of newsprint and slick paper. Publisher: Starlog Communications. No editor named. One issue: December 1995. / The 1990s success of the Television series The X-Files (1993-2002) gave rise to a number of publications devoted entirely to this programme. A few of these also carried material on other productions, as ...
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 ...