SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 10 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 9 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Monsters and Things
Letter-size, saddle-stapled Magazine printed on newsprint-quality paper. Magnum Publications. Editor: Larry T Shaw (credited as L T Shaw). Managing Editor: M J Shapiro. Two issues, January and April 1959. / Nominally a Cinema magazine like its companion title Monster Parade, Monsters and Things contained considerable short fiction as well as some film ...
Wang Dulu
Writing name of Wang Baoxiang (1909-1977), a Chinese author, largely of detective stories and mysteries, whose most productive period in the late 1930s and 1940s saw some of the definitive works of martial-arts fiction (see Wuxia). He was born to Manchu parents in Beijing, shortly before the abdication of the last emperor would see the suspension of the hereditary stipend paid to aristocrats. As a result, his family and many like it fell ...
Big Little Books
Compact children's book format inaugurated in late 1932 by the Whitman Publishing Company (Racine, Wisconsin) with The Adventures of Dick Tracy (graph 1932) and widely imitated by other publishers. A typical Big Little Book had a width of 3 5/8 inches and a height of 4½ inches, with 432 pages making a fat little volume 1½ inches thick (roughly 9.2 cm x 11.4 cm x 3.8cm). Every page of text was faced by a full-page captioned picture. Many ...
Way ... Way Out
Film (1966). Coldwater. Directed by Gordon Douglas. Written by William Bowers and László Vadnay. Cast includes Anita Ekberg, Brian Keith, Jerry Lewis, Robert Morley, Howard Morris, Dick Shawn, Connie Stevens and Dennis Weaver. 101 minutes. Colour. / In the future, both the Americans and the Russians maintain two-man meteorological stations on the Moon. Since their current astronauts (Weaver, Morris) are constantly in conflict, the Americans ...
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 ...