SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 11 April 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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Tilton, Lois
(1946- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "In the Service of Evil" in Bringing Down the Moon: 15 Tales of Fantasy and Terror (anth 1985) edited by Jani Anderson; most of her subsequent work has been fantasy or horror, though some of her short stories are sf, like "Pericles the Tyrant" (October 2005 Asimov's), an Alternate History which won a 2005 ...
Parks and Recreation
US tv series (2009-2015). NBC Universal, Deedle Dee, Fremulon, 3Arts, Schur Films, Universal Media Studios. Directed by Dean Holland, Tom McGill, Michael Schur and others. Written by Megan Amram, Aisha Muharrar, Matt Murray, Amy Poehler, Michael Schur, Jen Statsky, Harris Wittels, Alan Yang and others. Cast includes Aziz Ansari, Jim O'Heir, Aubrey Plaza, Amy Poehler, Chris Pratt and Adam Scott. 125 22-minute episodes. / Earnest civil servant Leslie Knope (Poehler) idolizes women in ...
Onopa, Robert
(1943- ) US academic and author of The Pleasure Tube (1979), a tale in which an astronaut returns from space to a hallucinatory America and becomes entrapped, in the narrative present tense, in a Sex machine; Barry N Malzberg's influence seems clear. With David G Hartwell he edited Triquarterly 49 (anth 1980), a special sf issue of the magazine ...
Kelly, Frank K
(1914-2010) US journalist and author of considerable nonfiction, including studies in American contemporary history with Cornelius Ryan (1920-1974). He began to publish sf with "The Light Bender" in Wonder Stories for June 1931, and rapidly became known for Space-Opera tales of some bleakness, with a tendency toward Disaster, though some of his adventures featuring travel through various ...
Shadow, The
This crime-fighting character made his debut in 1930 as narrator of the US Radio programme Detective Story. The opening lines soon became famous: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" In 1937 the very popular programme became The Shadow and continued through well over 600 episodes until 1954, with Orson Welles in the star role 1937-1938; among its many scriptwriters were Alfred ...
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 ...