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Monday 13 July 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 13 July 2026
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Chalmers, Garet
Pseudonym of UK author Margaret Simpson Chalmers (1939- ), whose two sf novels for Robert Hale Limited are A Legend in His Own Deathtime (1978), set in a Far-Future City deeply sunk in Decadence, and Homo-Hetero (1980), portraying the dilemma of two lovers of opposite gender in a ...
Manibo, Victor
(? - ) Filipino lawyer and author, now in US, whose Near Future first novel, The Sleepless (2022), ascribes the eponymous affliction (or benefit) affecting billions of the world's population to a Pandemic. In an America thus affected, lives continue; the protagonist of the tale, an investigative reporter immersed in the Media Landscape, must ...
Wright, Lan
Working name of UK author Lionel Percy Wright (1923-2010) for all his fiction; increased responsibilities in manufacturing industry curtailed his writing career. He began publishing sf with "Operation Exodus" in New Worlds for January 1952, and was active for over a decade in UK magazines, chiefly New Worlds and Nebula Science Fiction. His Johnny Dawson series in ...
Austria
Austrian literature must be considered a part of the larger German literature (see Germany), although with a distinct voice; Austrian writers have always been published more by German publishing houses than by Austrian ones. / At the turn of the century, Vienna was a veritable laboratory for many of the ideas of modern times, from psychoanalysis and logical positivism to music, the arts and literature: here were found Sigmund ...
Unwin, Stanley
(1911-2002) South African-born broadcaster, comedian and author, in UK from 1914; best-known for his creation of a comically distorted version of English, a gobbledegookish patter not dissimilar to the effect of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", which first appeared in Through the Looking-Glass (1871). The Linguistic distortion is superficial but cumulatively compelling; through its mildly antic effect, a sense of an ...
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 ...