SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 August 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.
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Richter, Eugen
(1838-1906) German politician and author, who opposed nineteenth century German antisemitism with vigour and eloquence, and as a liberal opposed the government of Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898). Of sf interest is Sozialdemokratische Zukunftsbilder: frei nach Bebel (1891; trans Henry Wright as Pictures of the Socialistic Future (Freely Adapted from Bebel);vt ...
Murray, Frieda A
(1948- ) US author of fantasy, almost always in collaboration with her husband Roland J Green, who began to publish work of genre interest with Throne of Sherran: The Book of Kantela: A Novel of High Fantasy (1985) with Green; further volumes in the presumably intended Throne of Sherran sequence did not appear. Green and Murray also contributed an Elric story to the Michael ...
Morphett, Tony
(1938-2018) Australian screenwriter and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Litterbug" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from July 1969, and who co-wrote The Last Wave (1977), co-written and directed by Peter Weir, whose last image – of a vast wave from the deeps of the ocean about to flood Australia – has become famous. Morphett's books of ...
Rocketeer, The
Film (1991; vt The Adventures of the Rocketeer). Walt Disney (see The Walt Disney Company). Directed by Joe Johnston. Written by Danny Bilson, Paul DeMeo. Cast includes Alan Arkin, Bill Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Timothy Dalton and Paul Sorvino. 108 minutes. Colour. Based on The Rocketeer (1982-1995), a Comic created by Dave Stevens (1955-2008). / This enjoyable big-budget ...
Okri, Ben
(1959- ) Nigerian journalist and author mostly in UK from 1978, active from the mid 1970s. Most of his novels, beginning with Flowers and Shadows (1980) and including his best known title, The Famished Road (1991), fit loosely into an understanding of Fantastika less focused on its transgressiveness within an anglophone context, than upon a sense that his work does not visibly struggle against imposed conventions ...
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 ...