SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 17 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.
Site updated on 17 February 2025
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Cox, Richard
(1931- ) UK author whose full name is Richard Hubert Francis Cox; he should not be confused with Richard Cox (whom see). Of his several works, The Ice Raid (1983), is a Near Future tale depicting polar conflict between America and the USSR; Operation Sea Lion (anth 1974) offers some Alternate History speculations on the threatened German ...
Volk, Gordon
(1885-?1962) UK author who also wrote as by Raymond Knotts, in active service during World War One; he specialized almost exclusively in crime adventures without fantastic elements, with the exception of The Isle of Men (1932), a Lost Race tale set on a South Pacific Island where a race of physically superior humans is discovered. [JC]
Macpherson, Ian
(1905-1944) Scots author, farmer and broadcaster who is of genre interest for his last novel, Wild Harbour (1936), in which a devastating Future War – the expected World War Two – breaks out in 1944. The story centres on a married couple who flee to a cave in the hills of Speyside to escape the looming threat of bombs, Biological Weapons and ...
Watson, Angus
(1972- ) UK author who initially wrote fantasy, primarily the Age of Iron sequence beginning with Age of Iron (2014). He is of some sf interest for his second sequence, the West of East series beginning with You Die When You Die (2017), set in an Alternate World America a millennium ago, where Magic works, though a band of lost Vikings takes refuge. Towards the end of ...
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 ...