SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Spencer, John
(1944-2002) UK author, rock musician and one-time art-agency director, founding what would become Young Artists, a major UK agency for preponderantly sf/fantasy artists. His first sf novel, The Electronic Lullaby Meat Market (1975), in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Mick Farren, sets a quirky thriller in a violently hyperbolic Near-Future world described in sex-charged terms reminiscent of the late-1960s ...
Wipeout
Videogame (1995). Psygnosis. Designed by Nick Burcombe. Platforms: DOS, PS1, Win (1995); Saturn (1996). / Wipeout is a racing game (see Videogames) set in the mid-twenty-first century, in which players compete for first place using Antigravity vehicles in tightly enclosed tracks. The gameplay is often frenetic, combining strikingly rapid movement through a variety of ...
Lalley, Paul
(? - ) US author of a Disaster thriller, The Colony (1979), which features the destruction of a small town by a plague of abnormal ants, who may be governed by a Hive Mind. [JC]
Sea-Lion
Pseudonym of UK naval officer and author Geoffrey Martin Bennett (1909-1983), whose two sf novels both deal with menaces at sea: The Invisible Ships (1950) indeed features invisible ships (see Invisibility), and This Creeping Evil (1950) features sea Monsters and a threat to the UK [JC]
Gay, J Drew
(1846-1890) UK journalist, politician, explorer and author in whose The Mystery of the Shroud: A Tale of Socialism (1887) a fog gives a socialist secret society the chance to conquer England in the Near Future, but the chance is muffed. [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 ...