SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 July 2025
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 July 2025
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Tarnacre, Robert
Pseudonym of UK author Robert Cartmell (1877-? ) in whose Lost Race tale, Beyond the Swamps (1929), a British patrol boat explores an unknown backwater, upstream from which an intact ancient Roman civilization discovered, and is soon brought to heel under the civilizing influence of Empire discipline. [JC]
Hoobler, Dorothy
(1941- ) US author, mostly of nonfiction for young audiences in collaboration with her husband, Thomas Hoobler, whom see for details. [JC]
Sinisalo, Johanna
(1958- ) Finnish author who studied literature and drama at the University of Tampere, then worked in advertising while writing short stories, virtually all sf or fantasy; in 1997, she turned to full-time writing. Her first published stories, "Kilometripylväät" ["Kilometre Signs"] and "Jäinen kaupunki" ["Glacier Town"], appeared together in the Finnish Original Anthology Vuosirengas 74 (anth 1974 ed ...
Fermi Paradox
The Fermi Paradox – not a true logical Paradox – denotes the apparent contradiction between plausibility arguments for the existence of numerous Alien civilizations (based on the age of the universe, estimated numbers of potentially life-supporting planets in the habitable zones of suitable stars, and so on, encapsulated in a formula known as the Drake equation; see SETI) and the lack of hard evidence for ...
Kenyon, Tim
(? - ) UK author of an sf novel, Ersatz Nation (2002), set in two Parallel Worlds, one our own, and a second, a Dystopian counterpart to ours run by an entity known as Mother Necessity, who must (rather tamely) be overthrown. [JC]
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 ...