SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 11 July 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 7 July 2026
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Strange Terrors
US Comic (1952-1953). St John. 7 issues. Artists include William Ekgren, Bob Forgione, Joe Kubert, George Meyerriecks, Bill Molno and Al Tyler. Script writers unidentified. #1-#5 36 pages with 4-5 long strips and either a short text story or a couple of pages of jokes; #6-#7 100 pages ("3 full-length comics in 1") with 13 long strips, plus joke pages and a few short strips. / By beginning with many 1940s reprints before settling into all-new stories, then ...
Comfort, Alex
(1920-2000) UK medical doctor, poet and author of significant popular work in the fields of sexology and gerontology, being perhaps best known for The Joy of Sex (1972; frequently revised), many of whose interior illustrations were by Chris Foss. Before World War Two he established an extremely precocious reputation for his poetry and fiction, and for the pacifism he espoused rigorously during the years of conflict (later, in 1961, in connection ...
Toombs, Robert T
(? - ) Almost certainly a pseudonym; no identity has been suggested for this name, which is attached to a series of five short Edisonades featuring Electric Bob, beginning with Electric Bob and His White Alligator; Or, Hunting for Confederate Treasure in the Mississippi River (1893 chap), in the New York Five Cent Library series of novellas published by Street and Smith. Electric Bob is a spoof ...
Sheckley, Robert
(1928-2005) US author, born and educated in New York, where he set some of his fiction, publishing his first story, "Final Examination", in Imagination for May 1952. Sheckley's career falls into three periods: the 1950s, the 1960s, and afterwards. In the first period he produced short fiction prolifically for several years in various magazines, though his supple, witty, talkative, well crafted work was especially suited to ...
All Good Comics
US Comic (1944; 1946). Fox Publications, Inc. Artists include Lou Ferstadt, Frank Godwin and Alvin Hollingsworth. 2 issues. Initially published in 1944, All Good Comics was one of several unnumbered one-shot 132 page comics published by Fox in this era – such as The Book of Comics, All Top Comics, All Your Comics (all 1944) and Book of All-Comics (1945) – ...
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 ...