SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 11 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 7 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Passing Show, The
UK weekly paper of humour and short fiction which had two distinct incarnations, both published by Odhams Press, London. The first series ran for 918 issues from 20 March 1915 to 19 March 1932. This was a small tabloid-size magazine, initially with wartime paper restrictions, that gradually grew in size to become a standard tabloid from January 1924. The emphasis was on cartoons and brief humorous stories, but it occasionally ran to longer items and is probably best remembered, in this ...
Pollock, A W A
(1853-1923) UK soldier and author, an army officer from 1875 until the end of World War One; he is of sf interest for two Future War tales, Lord Roastem's Campaign in North-Eastern France With Sketch Map (1911 chap), which describes a series of imaginary battles, and In the Cockpit of Europe (1913) which specifically adumbrates World War One, with Britain coming to the aid of a beleaguered France. [JC]
Strauss, Erwin S
(1948- ) US bibliographer active in Fandom, perhaps best known for a Fanzine published by him in various formats and titles since 1968, from 1979 to date as The Connection; as a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Science Fiction Society, he compiled The Blackdex / The Bluedex (1965) with Marilyn Joyce Wisowaty, the basis for ...
Jantunen, John
(1971- ) Canadian author whose first novels, beginning with fallingoverstandingstill (2013), are nonfantastic, as is his thriller sequence, the Tilden Chronicles, beginning with No Quarter (2018) [nonfantastic titles are not listed below]. His first book of sf interest, A Desolate Splendor (2016), is set along the northern wilderness edge of a Ruined Earth land, ...
Armstrong, C Wicksteed
(1871-1963) UK author who worked for some years as a schoolteacher in South America. His first sf novel, The Yorl of the Northmen, or The Fate of the English Race: Being the Romance of a Monarchical Utopia (1892) as by Charles Strongi'th'arm, envisions a feudal and Eugenics-dominated world partially modelled on the works of William Morris. Armstrong's second novel, ...
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 ...