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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Perce, Elbert
(1831-1869) US translator and author whose Proto SF novel, Gulliver Joi: His Three Voyages; Being an Account of his Marvelous Adventures in Kailoo, Hydrogenia and Ejario (1851), intriguingly utilizes the convention of the Fantastic Voyage to shift his tale back and forth among several narrative categories: genuinely speculative sf; mild-mannered Bildungsroman leading to marriage; interplanetary romance; the ...
Thurston, Robert
(1936-2021) US author and academic who attended the first Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop in 1968 and began to publish work of genre interest with "Stop Me before I Tell More", in Orbit 9 (anth 1971) edited by Damon Knight, and who was for some years known only for his short work. This is notable more for its examination of individual humans caught in social or sexual extremis ...
SF Movieland
Letter-size saddle-stapled US Cinema magazine, published on a mix of glossy and newsprint-quality paper by New Media Publications. Editor: James Van Hise. Ten issues, 1983 to 1988. / This publication began life as Van Hise's Enterprise Incidents, a high-quality Fanzine dealing almost entirely with Star Trek (1966-1969). New Media Publications purchased the publication in 1982 with #10, at ...
Marvelman
UK reprints of the US character Captain Marvel published by L Miller were successful enough to warrant continued independent publication under a new name after the original character was deemed a copy of Superman and the courts forbade any further publication. The character was revised and changed just enough to avoid copyright issues, and re-dubbed Marvelman (346 issues, 1954-1963) in the process. Drawn by Mick ...
Thornton, John
(? -? ) UK author of A Voyage to Immanuel's Land [full title in Checklist below] (1826) anonymous, a Fantastic Voyage devoted to the promulgation of Christian doctrine, allegorized on the model of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1677-1684), not deftly. [JC]
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 ...