SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 July 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 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Peek, Ben
(1976- ) Australian author whose first work, The Enigma Variant (1999 chap) with Chris Mowbray is horror. He began publishing work of wider genre interest with "Cigarettes and Roses" in Passing Strange: A New Anthology of Australian Speculative Fiction (anth 2002) edited by Bill Congreve; further short stories have been assembled as Dead Americans and Other Stories (coll ...
Maloney, Mack
Pseudonym of US author Brian Kelleher (1952- ) for two sequences, the first being the Wingman series of Military SF sf novels set in a Ruined Earth America, beginning with Wingman (1987), pausing for well over a decade after Wingman #16: The Tomorrow War (1999), and resuming with Wingman #17: Attack on Area 51 (2013). The more ambitious Starhawk ...
Mastin, John
(1865-1932) UK author, clergyman and science popularizer, author of three Scientific Romances. The Stolen Planet (1906) features the picaresque adventures of two Earthmen who, after Earth has been shaken by a vast Disaster, undertake a Fantastic Voyage through the solar system and beyond, as narrated by Jervis Meredith, co-developer of an "aerostat" capable of ...
Bonesteel, Elizabeth
(? - ) US author whose Central Corps sequence, beginning with The Cold Between (2016), is a Space Opera series in which romance and interstellar conspiracies initially intertwine, though (perhaps encouragingly) larger scale problems confront General Corps Commander Elena Shaw. Her departure from the military (Military SF elements are modestly in evidence throughout) ...
Corpsicle
One of the wittier items of sf Terminology, coined by Frederik Pohl as "corpse-sicle" in his contribution to the Cryonics symposium – also including Robert C W Ettinger – "Immortality Through Freezing" (August 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow), and contracted to "corpsicle" in Pohl's novel ...
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 ...