SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 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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Living Worlds
The notion that a planet might be a living creature is a rather startling one; indeed, it was initially used purely for its shock value. In R A Kennedy's remarkable philosophical extravaganza The Triuneverse (1912), Mars begins to reproduce by binary fission and its daughter cells devour much of the solar system. In "When the World Screamed" (25 February-3 March 1928 Liberty; April-May 1928 ...
Burroughs, William S
(1914-1997) US author born into a successful business family, and a Harvard graduate in English literature in 1936, but a deeply transgressive and famous drop-out thereafter. He lived in Mexico, North Africa and the UK, and for many years was a heroin addict. He began writing in the late 1930s, but had no success until the early 1950s when he wrote two confessional books: Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict (1953 as by William Lee; rev as by Burroughs 1977) and ...
Trow, George W S
(1943-2006) US journalist, playwright, polemicist and author, probably best known for a work of moderately savage, socially conservative criticism of the American Media Landscape, Within the Context of No Context (17 November 1980 The New Yorker; 1981). He is of modest sf interest for the stories assembled in Bullies (coll 1980), surreal Satires set in unclearly discernible ...
Morris, William
(1834-1896) UK designer, artist, publisher, poet and author whose greatest fame rests on his work as a designer of furniture and fabrics; his efforts to reform the prevalent vulgarity of mid-Victorian taste and to preserve standards of craftsmanship placed him in radical and irresolvable conflict with the basic tendencies of the industrial era, then in the first vigour of its youth. This conflict was variously expressed in his writing. In his early poems, collected in ...
Garth, Will
A House Name used in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling Stories and Captain Future 1937-1941 by Otto Binder, Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, Mort Weisinger and possibly others. The film novelization of ...
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 ...