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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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Foreman, Russell
(1921-2000) Australian author of a Near Future Disaster novel, The Ringway Virus (1976), in which a virus-based Pandemic 100% fatal to humans threatens to terminate the species; there is some small chance that isolated breeding couples will survive. [JC]
Antiheroes
Although the name suggests a simple opposition to Heroes, antiheroes are not synonymous with Villains. They range from merely unsympathetic protagonists whose downfall or comeuppance provides satisfaction – typically at slick short story length – to figures of some stature and personal attraction who are dark complements of heroes. Satan is often viewed in genre terms as the antihero counterpart of God (see ...
O'Connell, Jack
(1959-2024) US author of a noir thriller sequence set in the small, stressed New England city of Quinsigamond – comprising Box Nine (1992), Wireless (1993), The Skin Palace (1996) and Word Made Flesh (1999) – and transparently based on his hometown, Worcester, Massachusetts. The fracture line of Equipoisal anxiety, as usual in this kind of tale, can be traced through the moves of the ...
Talbot, Bryan
(1952- ) UK Comics artist and author, a prolific and at times excitingly experimental author/artist of much work since the beginning of the 1970s. After the nature of comics, most of his work escapes realistic trammels as with the material assembled as Bryan Talbot's Brainstorm: The Complete Chester P Hackenbush and Other Underground Classics (various original works here assembled; graph coll 1982). In ...
Aronofsky, Darren
(1969- ) US filmmaker whose sf films to date have been the Mathematical psychodrama π or Pi (1998) and the Immortality quest epic The Fountain (2007); he also co-wrote David Twohy's World War Two haunted-submarine (see ...
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 ...