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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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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 ...
O'Loughlin, Ed
(1966- ) Canadian journalist and author, some of whose earlier novels verge into Technothriller country but are not fantastic. His fourth novel, the very Near Future This Eden (2021), is of sf interest for its depiction of a world where games (see Games and Sports) do not only reflect reality but increasingly create the world. Though told with some ...
Canter, Mark
(1952- ) US author whose Ember from the Sun (1995) combines elements of Prehistoric SF and the Lost World genre in the tale of a doctor who discovers the body of a pregnant, recently dead Neanderthal woman in Alaska, and implants the foetus in a human mother. The child, the eponymous Ember, grows up immune to cold, with paranormal (see Psi Powers) ...
Washington, S H L
(1910-? ) UK author of works of family history whose first publication, on the title page of which he is stated to be thirteen, is The Temple of Mystery: A Tale of Adventure (1924), a Lost Race tale with clear echoes of H Rider Haggard, set in a City occupied by Ancient Egyptians which may contain prehistoric beasts. [JC]
Wollheim, Donald A
(1914-1990) US editor and author, and one of the first and most vociferous sf fans; with Forrest J Ackerman, Wollheim was perhaps the most dynamic member of the embryo Fandom of the 1930s. A lifetime resident of New York City, he published innumerable Fanzines, was co-editor of the early semiprozine Fanciful Tales of Time and Space in 1936, founded ...
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 ...