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Thursday 16 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 14 July 2026
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Evans, Bill
Working name of US chemist and author William Harrington Evans (1921-1985) for his sf studies and involvement in fandom, which began with bibliographical and other work in the 1940s and 1950s, most notably in The Fanzine Index, a journal he published with Bob Pavlat through 1952. The Fanzine Index catalogued Fanzines and was later assembled into a single volume, ...
Dixon, Franklin W
Perhaps the most famous House Name of the Stratemeyer Syndicate (see Edward Stratemeyer), used by Leslie McFarlane for his contributions to the Hardy Boys sequence and by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and others; rare items of genre interest in this series include The Disappearing Floor (1940) by John ...
Gemmell, David A
(1948-2006) UK journalist and editor, and then full-time author, primarily of Heroic Fantasy, most famous for his first (and long-lived) Fantasy series, the Drenai Saga, beginning with Legend (1984; vt Against the Horde 1988) and finishing with Hero in the Shadows (2000; vt Hero in the Shadows: Waylander the Slayer Stalks an Ancient Evil 2000), and built around the ...
Kimball, Ward
(1914-2002) US animator, director and producer, one of Walt Disney's "nine old men" (see The Walt Disney Company). / Kimball, full name Ward Walrath Kimball, was born in Minneapolis. He studied at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts, then joined the Disney studio in 1934 as an inbetweener (drawing intermediate frames between key frames so the animation looks smooth); he became an animator in 1936 and was the Animation Supervisor or Directing ...
McKimmey, James, Jr
(1923-2011) US author who, after serving in World War Two, began publishing work of genre interest with "Tergiversation" in Lilith Lorraine's The Avalonian (only issue, 1952), publishing around twenty sf stories over the next fifteen years for journals including Galaxy, If and Planet Stories. Much of his work during his career, ...
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 ...