SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 15 May 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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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
Nogaret, François-Félix
(1740-1831) French bureaucrat and author, intermittently prolific from around 1770 to 1830; he is of sf interest for Le Miroir des événements actuels, ou la belle au plus offrant, Histoire à deux visages ["The Mirror of Present Events, or, Beauty to the Highest Bidder: A Two-Faced Tale"] [for various versions see Checklist below] (1790 chap; trans Brian Stableford as "The Mirror of Present Events; Or, Beauty to the ...
Abramov, Aleksandr
(1900-1985) Russian author, screenwriter, theatre critic and journalist who began to publish work of genre interest with Gibel' Shakhmat ["The Death of Chess"] (1926 chap), featuring a Chess-playing Machine that defeats the finest human players. Several decades passed before he returned to sf, invariably in collaboration with his son Sergei Abramov (1944-2024), who is not always credited. The novel-length "Hozhdenie za Tri ...
Van Pelt, James
(1954- ) US teacher and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "No Small Change" in After Hours for January 1991; his short fiction moves smoothly from supernatural horror and Horror in SF through to sf proper, and frequently illuminates his teaching life through a wide application of generic lenses. In "Nor Lender Be" (February 1999 Analog), one of his more powerful (and prescient) ...
Super Star Heroes
US letter-size Cinema magazine printed on a mix of newsprint and slick paper. Publisher: Ideal Publishing Corporation. No editor named. Eleven issues from October 1978 to January 1980. Publication schedule was nominally bimonthly, but in fact somewhat erratic. / Ideal Publishing entered the sf cinema market with this title of middling quality, which managed to survive longer than many similar publications of the period. During its run it generally covered ...
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 ...