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.
Site updated on 6 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Violet Evergarden
Japanese animated tv series (2018). Kyoto Animation. Based on the Light Novel by Kana Akatsuki (author) and Akiko Takas (illustrator). Directed by Taichi Ishidate. Written by Reiko Yoshida. Voice cast includes Yui Ishikawa, Hidenobu Kiuchi, Takehito Koyasu, Daisuke Namikawa. Thirteen broadcast 24-minute episodes, plus one OVA. Colour. / Violet Evergarden (Ishikawa) was a teenaged soldier in a recently concluded ...
Solomon, Rivers
(1988- ) US author, in UK from 2018, whose first novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), is set in a Generation Starship many years into its journey. The SF Megatext provides a generous range of likelihoods for this setting to illuminate, some of which Solomon duly invokes: the ritualized maintenance procedures designed to keep the ship and its inhabitants in order; the hierarchized ...
Wright, Allen Kendrick
(1861-1948) US minister and author whose To the Poles by Airship; Or, Around the World Endways (1909) confusedly but intriguingly surrounds the narrative of a round-the-world trip, in an Airship powered by liquid air (see Power Sources), with a series of speculations and visions: a Lost Race inhabiting Atlantis is glimpsed; a ...
Sykes, W Stanley
(1894-1961) UK anaesthesiologist and author, in active service during World War One. Most of his fiction comprises detective thrillers with no fantastic content; of sf interest is The Ray of Doom: A Detective Novel (1935), in which the eponymous Ray is presented with some scientific rigour. [JC]
Davies, Gordon C
(1923-1994) UK illustrator and author, most of his sf-related work being covers for the UK publisher Curtis Warren, which issued mostly bottom-of-the-market paperback originals in early 1950s; Steve Holland estimates that he executed at least forty covers for the firm. He also painted several 1952 covers for Authentic Science Fiction. A complete catalogue of his work is not ...
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 ...