SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 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 14 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Delorme, Charles
Pseudonym of French-born author Charles Rumball (1825-1894), in UK in early life, in Canada from 1844, where he had a small reputation, in London, Ontario and elsewhere, for his burlesque writings. The Marvellous and Incredible Adventures of Charles Thunderbolt, in the Moon (1851), composed as a juvenile, is intriguingly detailed in its description of a steam-driven Spaceship which carries the eponymous Thunderbolt to the ...
Retro Hugo
Retrospective Hugo awards may be voted under certain circumstances to fill the perceived gap left by a past World SF Convention at which no Hugos were presented. Besides the voting of the usual Hugos for the previous year's sf, a Worldcon committee may optionally allow its members to choose Retro Hugos which might have been but were not presented at the Worldcon of 50, 75 or 100 years previously ...
Sidewise Award
These annual awards for Alternate History fiction were conceived in 1995 by Evelyn C Leeper, Robert B Schmunk and Steven H Silver, and have since been presented annually in two categories, Long Form for works of more than 60,000 words and Short Form for works (including poems) of less than 60,000 words. The awards' name is a homage to Murray Leinster's short ...
Goss, James
(1974- ) UK author, playwright and producer whose first work of genre interest was a stage adaptation with Arvind Ethan David of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) by Douglas Adams, as Dirk (first performed 1995; 2016). He has long been associated with the Doctor Who franchise, initially as the content producer in charge of the BBC's official show website from 2000 ...
Molesworth, Vol
(1924-1964) Australian journalist and author, active in Fandom around the period of World War Two. His sf included two series: the Ape of God sequence, comprising Ape of God (1943 chap) and Monster at Large (1943 chap), which retells Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) in an Australian setting (see also ...
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 ...