SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 8 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.
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Nautilus Award
Polish Award – Nagroda Nautilus in Polish – for the best Fantastika written in Polish and published in Poland in the preceding year, established in 2004 by Robert J Szmidt, editor of the magazine Science Fiction. The prize was presented annually in two categories – novel and short story (respectively ...
Shuttered Room, The
Film (1967; vt Blood Island). Warner Brothers/Seven-Arts Productions, Ltd. (US),Warner-Pathe' (UK). Produced by Phillip Hazelton. Directed by David Greene. Written by D B Ledrov and Nathaniel Tanchuck based on the title story by August Derleth and H P Lovecraft in The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (coll 1959). Costumes designed by Caroline Mott. Cast includes Carol Lynley, Oliver Reed, Flora ...
Collier's Weekly
US news and general interest magazine, noted early in its existence for its investigative journalism; counted as one of the Slicks although for most of its run it was in tabloid format. It was founded by the Irish immigrant Peter Fenelon Collier (1849-1909) as Collier's Once A Week from 28 April 1888, edited by fellow Irishman Nugent Robinson. It became Collier's Weekly in 1895 and simply Collier's from 1905. It remained weekly to 25 July 1953, ...
Hedges, Sid G
(1897-1974) UK author, mostly of detective thrillers; of interest are The Channel Tunnel Mystery (1931), which does not actually incorporate the eponymous tunnel, and the Near Future Plague Panic (1934), in which criminals seeking vast sums of blackmail threaten to infect the entire world with the eponymous bacillus, creating a deadly Pandemic. [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 ...