SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 10 September 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 7 September 2026
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Phillips, Alexander M
(1907-1991) US author and long-time sf fan, based in Philadelphia, who wrote a small body of science fiction, fantasy and nonfiction. He was a technical writer and draughtsman as well as an amateur naturalist and photographer. His first professionally published story was "The Death of the Moon" (February 1929 Amazing), in which advanced Aliens from the Moon attempt to conquer Earth in the ...
Thundarr the Barbarian
US animated tv series (1980-1981). Ruby-Spears Productions for ABC. Created by Steve Gerber. Producer Jerry Eisenberg. Character designs by Alex Toth and Jack Kirby. Directors include Charles A Nichols, John Kimball, and Rudy Larriva. Writers include Buzz Dixon, Mark Evanier, Steve Gerber, Martin Pasko, Roy Thomas, and Christopher Vane. Voiced by Robert Ridgely, Nellie Bellflower, and Henry Corden. Music by Dean Elliott. 21 ...
Kochai, Jamil Jan
(1992- ) Pakistan-born author of refugee Afghan family, in US from infancy, whose work cannot be thought of directly in sf terms, though it clearly draws upon the churned mosaic of Fantastika, especially where that cauldron of story incorporates stories linked, as in much Arabian Fantasy, to an imperative over-story [for Arabian Fantasy see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links ...
Dickinson, Robert
(1962- ) UK author whose first novel, The Noise of Strangers (2010), is Dystopia set in a very Near Future Britain dense with justified paranoia; the immediate setting is Brighton, where four couples maintain an increasingly precarious "ordinary" life in a Keep-like enclave; beyond is chaos and termination. The Schism (2013) infiltrates almost to the borders ...
Walter, W Grey
(1910-1977) American-born neurophysiologist, cyberneticist and author, in the UK from 1915. He was a pioneer, between 1936 and 1956, of the development and use of electroencephalography in the UK; his early popular study, The Living Brain (1953), was influential in its time. In the late 1940s he constructed early Robots known as tortoises, capable of locating a recharging point when their batteries ran low, and of being "taught" through simple ...
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 ...