SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 7 February 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 6 February 2026
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Schofield, Alfred Taylor
(1846-1929) UK medical doctor and author whose nonfiction was divided between technical medical studies and hortatory guides to Christianity; his sf tales are Thought Experiments in the nineteenth century manner, where such narratives are more likely to teach than to explore. Travels in the Interior, or The Wonderful Adventures of Luke and Belinda: Edited by a London Physician (1887) as by Luke Theophilus Courteney carries its protagonists, ...
Rigel
US letter-size (semiprozine) published by Aesir Press, Richmond, California and edited by Eric Vinicoff; eight quarterly issues, Summer 1981 to Summer 1983. Rigel described itself as a Small-Press Prozine, because its payment rates were within the professional range recommended by SFWA at that time (up to 3¢ a word). The magazine was at the ...
Belfield, Harry Wedgwood
(1893-1964) UK author, almost exclusively for boys (see Children's SF), whose first two works of sf interest for the Boys' Friend Library were A Temple of Thrills!: A Vivid, Long Complete Story of Desperate Peril and Adventure in India (1923 chap) as by Rupert Drake, which involves Rockets; and ...
Ma Jian
(1953- ) Chinese-born painter, photographer and author, in Britain since 1999 and naturalized as a British subject, whose anti-Communist writings made him persona non grata in his native land. His exile status has not only conferred upon him an international celebrity, but also a removal from the traditional chronology of bibliography, with some of his books appearing first in translation, preceding the publication of the original texts in Chinese. Banned in ...
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 ...