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Sunday 19 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.
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Lewis, Charles Bertrand
(1842-1924) US journalist and author whose career under his own name began before the American Civil War, and who also published as by M Quad, using this name mainly for his humorous work (most notably the Mr Bowser series) and adventure fiction. In Under Five Lakes; Or, the Cruise of the "Destroyer" (1886) as by M Quad a Lost World is discovered in a series of subterranean caverns under the Great Lakes (see ...
Fiedler, Leslie A
(1917-2003) US critic and author, active from around 1940, whose piercing and mythopoeic views on the relationship between American culture and literature were first expressed in "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey" (June 1948 Partisan Review; assembled in An End to Innocence: Essays on Culture and Politics, coll 1955), where he argued that the inexpressive but obvious homoerotic (often interracial) doublings embodied in so many American novels exposed a profound ...
Flackes, B
Working name of Irish author William David Flackes (1921-1993), who spent much of his career as a journalist reporting on Irish matters; he received the OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1981. His sf was an early sideline, and not of much interest. It includes (almost certainly) two Space Operas as by Clem Macartney: Ten Years to Oblivion (1951) and Dark Side of Venus (1951), and, under his own name, Duel in Nightmare Worlds ...
Shibano Takumi
(1926-2010) Japanese author, translator and critic. Shibano began writing sf as Rei Kozumi (a play on the Japanese version of "Cosmic Ray") while a high-school mathematics teacher, a job he quit in 1977 to become a full-time translator. He published his first short story in 1951. Later, 1969-1975, he published three sf juveniles, including Hokkyoku City no Hanran ["Revolt in North Pole City"] (1977). But his influence on Japanese sf lay more in his work as editor and publisher of ...
Winton, Tim
(1960- ) Australian author, active from 1960; almost all his fiction – despite some extreme venues, and an abiding concern with Ecological issues – has been nonfantastic. In the Winter Dark (1988) is set in a Zone called The Sink, whose deeply isolated inhabitants are tormented by a creature who may be no more (or less) than a fatal vibration of the psychic ...
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 ...