SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 7 February 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 6 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Fantasy Press
An early US Small Press specializing in sf/fantasy, historically important in the growth of genre-sf Publishing before sf was discovered by mass-market book houses. It was founded by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach in 1946, based in Reading, Pennsylvania. It published a number of works in hardcover by such authors as John W Campbell Jr, L ...
Lieberman, Robert
(1941- ) US author who worked initially as a teacher of mathematics and physics at university level until becoming a full-time writer in 1979. His third novel, Baby (1981), tells of the consequences when an elderly spinster gives virgin birth to a child with a beautiful singing voice. Perfect People (1986) sets its Dystopia in a City – hidden ...
Ball, Frank P
(1908-1970) US solicitor, publisher and author whose self-published Utopia, My Wondrous Dream (1923), may be set in Atlantis, as its protagonist falls asleep while reading Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), though his adventures soon depart radically from any Donnellian hypothesis, taking off from Jonathan ...
Busted
UK pop band formed by James Bourne (1983- ), Matt Willis (1983- ) and Charlie Simpson (1985- ), active 2000-2005 and 2015 onwards. One of their biggest hits, the cheerful pop-punk "Year 3000" (2003) was openly inspired by Bourne's obsession with Back to the Future (1985). A neighbour takes the band to the future in his car, which he has converted into 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 ...