SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
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Redal, Javier
Working name of Spanish author Francisco Javier Redal (1952-2006), who was by profession a high school science teacher. He published four novels and two novellas in collaboration with Juan Miguel Aguilera plus a dozen solo short stories; they met in 1977, as Aguilera was a student in the same high school where he worked, and published together a school sf Fanzine entitled Módulo ["Module"]. Redal was a prolific ...
Le Clézio, J M G
(1940- ) French author, born to Mauritian parents, and peripatetic for many years, his countries of residence including Nigeria, the UK and the USA; now primarily resident in France, America and Mauritius. Although he is known primarily for his work outside the sf field, much of his early work makes extensive use – though in an Absurdist and/or nouvelle roman mode – of sf tropes and topoi, beginning with ...
Marquardt, Michelle
(1971- ) Australian veterinarian, writer and editor, married to Bill Congreve. Her debut novel won the George Turner Prize for the best unpublished novel in 2000 and was published as Blue Silence (2002). The novel revolves around two earth-orbit Space Habitats, already at loggerheads over lifestyle and resources, on one of which an unknown Spaceship lands. ...
Minor, Wendell
(1944- ) US artist, author and illustrator, initially in association with Paul Bacon, whose concern and hands-on responsibility for typography he shares; his first covers date from 1968. The intensely enhanced Magic Realism of his work, much of it depicting rural America, has been influential from the 1970s. In contrast to the overdetermined populousness of the work of Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), his works ...
Boie, Kirsten
(1950- ) German teacher and author, active from 1985 in the production of tales mostly for younger children, often assembled in series, little of her early work translated into English. She is of some interest for the Skogland sequence beginning with Skogland (2005; trans David Henry Wilson as The Princess Plot 2009), a Ruritanian tale whose impostor princess wants ...
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 ...