SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 9 March 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 9 March 2026
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Connelly, J H
(1840-1903) US author, associated with works in the occult, though he wrote at least one Western. The first of the two tales assembled as Neila Sen and My Casual Death (coll 1890) is sf, featuring an Invention which projects sounds via light; The Crystal's Secret (1892) is an sf story again involving an aspect of light: images of a murder are trapped in an ice crystal. [JC]
Thomas, Chauncey
(1822-1898) US author of a Technocratic Utopia, The Crystal Button; Or Adventures of Paul Prognosis in the Forty-Ninth Century (1891); the text was apparently drafted in the 1870s, and only submitted for publication after the success of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), when it was edited by George Houghton (of Houghton, Mifflin and Company). The protagonist, ...
Peck, Vernon
(? - ) US author of a Near Future Sex novel, Super Sex Captain (1969). [JC]
Mars Needs Women
Made-for-tv film (1967). Azalea Pictures/American-International Television. Produced and directed by Larry Buchanan. Written by Buchanan. Cast includes Yvonne Craig and Tommy Kirk. 83 minutes. Colour. / Dop (Kirk) is leader of an expedition from Mars whose mission is to procure five Earthwomen for breeding purposes. Having mysteriously broadcast "Mars Needs Women" to the US Space Agency, Dop and his four companions reach Earth: there follows a "battle" ...
Gardner, Thomas S
(1908-1963) US chemist and author. He began writing sf with "The Last Woman" in Wonder Stories for April 1932 (erroneously published as by Thomas D Gardner), which has been anthologized, and went on to write another five stories in the next decade. Active in sf Fandom, he wrote an annual review of the sf and fantasy magazine field for Science Fiction Times (see Fantasy Times) and published ...
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 ...