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
Van Loon, Hendrik Willem
(1882-1944) Dutch-born historian and author, permanently in the US from 1919 when he was naturalized; he is best known for The Story of Mankind (1921), written (unlike H G Wells's almost simultaneous undertaking) primarily for children. His first work of sf interest was "If the Dutch Had Kept Nieuw Amsterdam" (in If It had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary History, anth 1931; vt If: or History Rewritten 1931, ed J C ...
Lundberg, Knud
(1920-2002) Danish athlete and author whose Near Future tale, Det olympiske håb (1955; trans Eiler Hansen and William Luscombe as The Olympic Hope: A Story from the Olympic Games, 1996 1958), suggests that the Olympics (see Games and Sports) may eventually be plagued by the use of Drugs to improve the performance of athletes. [JC]
Absolute Magnitude
US Semiprozine, which began in Spring/Summer 1993, under the title Harsh Mistress; but that name – intended to echo Robert A Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (December 1965-April 1966 If; 1966) – sounded like a bondage magazine to distributors, and the magazine was retitled (its numbering resuming with #1) with its third issue, ...
Pottinger, Stanley
(1940-2024) US lawyer, banker and author of two sf novels, each involving advances in Medicine: The Fourth Procedure (1995), in which foetal transplants have become possible, igniting a religious debate in America; and A Slow Burning (1999), set in the very Near Future where a brilliant neurosurgeon, using Nanotechnology, is able to repair damaged brains: the complicated ...
Michelmore, Reg
(? -? ). US author of whom nothing is known beyond An Adventure in Venus (1929 chap) illustrated by Frank R Paul, a clumsy Space Opera tale published by Hugo Gernsback in his Science Fiction Series. [JC]
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 ...