SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 16 September 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 14 September 2026
Sponsor of the day: Kees van Toorn and LAcon V
Wallace, F L
(1915-2004) US mechanical engineer and author who began publishing sf with "Hideaway" for Astounding in 1951, but was more strongly associated with Galaxy in the 1950s, the period of his greatest activity, where he quickly established a reputation for style, wit and emotional depth. Worlds in Balance (coll 1955) assembles two typical stories, but he never put together a full collection of his work, and left the field around 1960. ...
GlitterShip
US semiprofessional podzine and associated quarterly magazine in Ebook form. Both are produced by Keffy R M Kehrli, who began the podzine in April 2015 in order to provide a further outlet for LGBTQ writers and as a focus for LGBTQ story-lines. / The first podcast, on 2 April 2015, was "How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps" from Scigentasy #4 (March 2014), which the author A Merc Rustad (also known as Marc Fenn Wolfmoor) said "was very autobiographical". ...
Jay, Peter
(1937-2024) UK author, economist and former diplomat who served as the UK Ambassador to the USA 1977-1979. His Future History Apocalypse 2000: Economic Breakdown and the Suicide of Democracy (1987) with Michael Stewart, was inefficient as fiction but acute about the pleasures and miseries of late capitalism, which is portrayed as being consumed by debt; that a despicable populist named Olaf D Le Rith (ie ...
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize for Literature, chosen annually by the Swedish Academy – with occasional no-award years during World War One and World War Two – is not of course a genre Award. Below are listed the twenty-eight Nobel laureates in this category who have written sf or near-sf to the extent that they receive entries in the present encyclopedia. In addition to the honour, laureates receive a cash prize currently set at 11,000,000 ...
Gosse, Edmund
(1849-1928) UK scholar and critic, best known for his initially anonymous autobiography, Father and Son (1907); exceedingly prolific as a reviewer and belletrist for many years. Of sf interest is his novel, The Secret of Narcisse: A Romance (1892), set in the sixteenth century in the French town of Bar-le-Duc, where the protagonist, a sculptor, manufactures (see Inventions) a Robot which much resembles a ...
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 ...