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Wednesday 15 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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.
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Taylor, Robert Lewis
(1912-1998) US author, often of Humour, best known for the nonfantastic The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1959), which won a Pulitzer Price; in his sf novel, Adrift in a Boneyard (1947), the few survivors of a mysterious Disaster come, after long travel through the ruins of New York in the mode of the Last Man tale, to a peaceful ...
Sweeney-Baird, Christina
(1993- ) UK lawyer and author whose first novel, The End of Men (2021), is set in Near Future Britain devastated by a savage Pandemic which has proved fatal to almost all males, a familiar topos examined previously in such works as Brian W Aldiss's Greybeard (1964), P D James's The Children of Men (1992) ...
Harris, Raymond
(1953- ) US author who began publishing sf with his first novel, The Broken Worlds (1986), an attractive picaresque adventure. Shadows of the White Sun (1988) seems at first assessment almost too complex – it is set in a Far-Future solar system dominated by revenant star-sailors whose descendants occupy seven Space Habitats called the Hypaethra, orbiting the Sun, while a ...
Bernstein, David Siegel
Working name of US data analyst, consultant and author David Jay Bernstein (? - ), who began publishing work of genre interest with "A Long Way Up" in Black Petals for Summer 2003 as by David J Bernstein. He is of some interest for the nonfiction Blockbuster Science: The Real Science in Science Fiction (2017), an informal survey of various topics, including comments on Black Holes, ...
Sims, Alan
(? - ) Author, presumably UK, of the novels Phoinix (1928) and Anna Perenna (1930). Phoinix reworks Greek Mythology, not only retelling the saga of Achilles in the Trojan War but bringing in Hercules, the Argonauts and the poet Homeros (see Homer), who here exaggerates Achilles' rage and violence for dramatic effect. Anna Perenna (1930) is a broad ...
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 ...