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 ...
Burkholz, Herbert
(1929-2006) US author who lived mostly abroad until the last decade of his life; most of his ten novels were detective thrillers like the first, Sister Bear (1969), some in collaboration with Clifford Irving. He is of sf interest for the Sensitives sequence – comprising The Sensitives (1987), Strange Bedfellows (1988) and Brain Damage (1992) – featuring the exploits of a team of Telepathic ...
Hoche, Jules
(1859-1926) French author whose works seem to divide fairly equally between fiction and nonfiction. Several of his novels are sf, including Le Faiseur d'Hommes et sa Formule (1906; trans Brian Stableford as The Maker of Men and His Formula 2015), a tale clearly influence by H G Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), though the eponymous Mad Scientist ...
Casanova, Giacomo
(1725-1798) Venetian author, moderately prolific, variously employed; best known for his Mémoires (1826-1838 12 vols), the repetitive single-mindedness of sections of which caused his name to pass into the language as a serial seducer of women. He wrote initially in Italian, but later moved over to French, the language in which he wrote his Fantastic-Voyage novel, ...
Snaith, J C
(1876-1936) UK author, mostly in his early career of sentimental romances, of which Mrs Fitz (1910), set in a Ruritania, is of moderate interest; The Coming (1917), set in England, is a fantasy about the Second Coming of Christ. His first sf novel, An Affair of State (1913), is set in a Near Future England raddled by social strife; The Council of Seven (1921) describes a ...
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 ...