SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 April 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 13 April 2026
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Play by Mail
Term used to describe a game in which the players communicate by (physical) post. Typically all participants send their moves in at regular intervals to a central moderator, who processes the orders simultaneously and returns the results. The moderator is generally the only individual involved to know the current state of all the pieces belonging to every player. Sf examples include Starweb (1976) and ...
O'Malley, Kathleen
(1955- ) US author who has collaborated with A C Crispin on two volumes of the latter's StarBridge series of Space Operas for Young Adult readers. Another collaboration is the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Possession (1996) with J M Dillard. [JC/DRL]
Daventry, Leonard
(1915-1987) UK author whose first sf novel, A Man of Double Deed (1965), began the Claus Coman series of tales set on an Earth partly recovered from nuclear Disaster and run by Telepaths, one of whom, the protagonist, is assigned the task of solving various problems. The sequels, two book-length stories, were published together as Reflections in a Mirage, and The Ticking Is in Your Head (coll 1969) ...
Metaphysics
One of the qualities of sf that sometimes baffles new readers is the relative infrequency, despite its label, with which it deals with the hard sciences; indeed, sf deals as often with metaphysics as with Physics. This is not an accidental or a recent development; the exploration of metaphysical questions has been central to sf at least since the time of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus ...
Underwood-Miller Inc
US Small Press founded in 1976 by Pennsylvania-based Chuck Miller and Tim Underwood, who worked in California. Their first book, a first hardcover edition of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth (1950; their edition 1976) almost accidentally set them on a course which would identify them with that author, many of whose works, new ...
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 ...