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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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 ...
Avatars
In the world of Computers, Cyberspace and Virtual Reality as these concepts already exist, avatars are familiar as the visible icons or points of presence in virtual space of either human beings or software routines. Well-known examples include the representations of player and non-player characters in Videogames, ...
Blum, Ralph
(1932-2016) US screenwriter and author involved in early Drug research, which is reflected in his sf novel The Simultaneous Man (1970). A Black convict undergoes, through advanced brainwashing, a Memory Edit that progressively erases his personality, rather as in Alfred Bester's earlier The Demolished Man (January-March 1952 Galaxy; 1953) or Robert ...
Something Else
UK Semiprozine, three issues (Spring 1980, Winter 1980, Spring 1984), A4 format, published and edited by Charles Partington from Manchester. Print run was between 1000 and 1500 copies. This was a short-lived but brave attempt by Partington, who had previously edited Alien Worlds, to continue the New Worlds tradition. Many of the stalwarts of ...
Lard, Eric
(? - ) US author of some sf interest for the Equipoisal Dawn of the Construct (2022), whose protagonist, exposed to a Magic formula, finds himself via Time Travel defending humanity in various epochs and Alternate History versions of Earth's history. The main venue is a Near Future ...
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 ...