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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Bing, Jon
(1944-2014) Norwegian professor of law, author and playwright. Born in the town of Tønsberg, Bing moved to Oslo to attend university, and there in 1966 met Tor Åge Bringsværd at the first official meeting of the Oslo University sf club, Aniara, created by the initiative of Oddvar Foss; they later contributed by reading aloud stories they had translated. They were both inveterate sf readers in a country where ...
Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told, The
One of the many reprint Digest-size magazines published by Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing, Flushing, using reprint rights acquired when he bought Amazing Stories and Fantastic. 42 issues [Summer] 1966 to July 1975. Issues #1-#13 and #18 appeared as The Most Thrilling SF Ever Told, other issues as Thrilling Science Fiction Adventures (#14-#17) and ...
Wayne, Jeff
(1943- ) US composer and musician, best known for his lengthy concept-album adaptation of H G Wells's The War of the Worlds (April-December 1897 Pearson's; 1898), released as Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (1978). This work, narrated rather grumpily by Richard Burton, retells the whole of Wells's story through songs sung by David Essex, Justin Hayward (of ...
Hay, George
Working name – in life as well as in print – of UK author, editor and sf enthusiast Oswyn Robert Tregonwell Hay (1922-1997), born Oswyn Robert Cohn, who began publishing sf in the early 1950s with Flight of the "Hesper" (1951), Man, Woman – and Android (1951), This Planet for Sale (1952), plus Terra! (1952) as by King Lang, a House Name. ...
Hardisty, Paul E
(? - ) Canadian engineer, environmental scientist and author, in Australia for some years; perhaps best-known for the Claymore Straker sequence of detections, beginning with The Abrupt Physics of Dying (2014), whose focus on Ecological crises brings the series close to the fantastic [the series is listed below for convenience]. Hardisty is of direct sf interest for The Forcing sequence beginning with ...
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 ...