SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 24 June 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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McCaffrey, Anne
(1926-2011) US-born professional horsebreeder and author, in Ireland from the 1970s; mother of Gigi McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey. Most of her output was sf, though tinged with the tone and instruments of Fantasy: much of her main work, the enormous Pern sequence of Planetary Romance adventures (see below) is normally experienced as fantasy. She began ...
Jackson, Edward Payson
(1839-1905) Turkish-born US educator and author, of missionary parents, in America from 1845; of sf interest is A Demigod: A Novel (1886), published anonymously, in which a Eugenics programme, begun in Greece in the seventeenth century, generates in the late nineteenth century a Superman who boasts extraordinary strength and agility, plus a massive intellect, out of which pours Inventions ...
Jennings, Gary
(1928-1999) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Myrrha" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for September 1962; at virtually the same time he published his first book March of the Robots: From the Manikins of Antiquity to the Space Robots of Tomorrow (1962), a nonfiction study of Robots for the Young Adult market. For some years Jennings published stories ...
Automan
US tv series (1983-1984). Glen A Larson Productions/The Kushner-Locke Company/20th Century Fox Television; ABC-TV US, BBC 1 UK. Created by Glen A Larson. Directors include Lee H Katzin, Winrich Kolbe, and Kim Manners. Writers include Sam Egan, Bruce Kalish, Larson, and Douglas Heyes, Jr. Cast includes Desi Arnaz Jr, Heather McNair, Gerald S O'Loughlin and Chuck Wagner. Narrator: uncredited. One 70-minute pilot film plus 13 50-minute episodes. / ...
Ward, Julian
(? - ) UK author whose We Died in Bond Street (1952) describes a Near Future London terrorized by the neo-fascist New England Party, which is attempting to take over the government. The city is put to the torch. [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 ...