SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 16 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 14 September 2026
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Laporta, Mark
(? - ) US author whose first works were for Young Adult readers, beginning with the Changing Hearts of Ixdahan Daherek sequence, whose eponymous protagonist in the first volume Heart of Earth (2015) finds himself exiled from his home planet – for acts of arrogance and stupidity – and forced to live on Earth as a teenager. Fortunately, he fends of an Invasion by ...
Scott, Rosie
(1948-2017) New Zealand author, in Australia from 1987, most of whose work – which is various and widely published – is nonfantastic. Of sf interest is Feral City (1992), a Dystopian tale set in a Near Future Australian City, mostly wasteland haunted by the unwanted. The protagonist and two companions opens a bookshop. A fragile attempt to re-establish a humane urbanity is ...
Mekton
Role Playing Game (1984). R Talsorian Games (RTG). Designed by Michael Pondsmith. / Mekton is a game designed to simulate a very specific form of fiction, that of Anime series focusing on giant Robots, or Mecha. Prominent examples of the genre include Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991), ...
Omega Point
Originally a metaphysical term conceived by the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) to denote the state of maximum complexity and consciousness towards which he considered the universe must evolve; the Roman Catholic Church barred his work from publication until after his death. Secularly aspirational versions of Teilhard de Chardin's concepts are central to the "singulatarian" Transhumanism influentially espoused by Ray Kurzweil (1948- ) in ...
Sutherland, James
(1900-1996) Scottish academic and author whose Parody of the Fantastic Voyage genre, The Narrative of Jasper Weeple: Being an Account of his Strange Journey to the Land of Midanglia, and of all that Happened to him in that Country (1930), describes the discovery of a medieval Utopian Lost Race in the heart of contemporary England. Midanglia, a benevolent ...
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 ...