SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 10 July 2025
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 2025
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Carruth, Shane
(1972- ) US filmmaker, with a background in mathematics and software engineering, whose debut feature Primer (2004), a bravura exercise in frugal filmmaking inspired by the $7000 budget claimed for fellow Texan Robert Rodriguez' debut El Mariachi (1992), remains the most complex, oblique, and viewer-challenging Time Travel film yet attempted; that its ...
Star Encounters
Letter-size saddle-stapled Media Magazine printed on newsprint. Published by Myron Fass as Stories, Layouts and Press. Editor: Jeffrey Goodman. Three bimonthly issues, all in 1978. / One of several sf Cinema magazines issued by Myron Fass from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, Star Encounters was among the shortest-lived. It featured some UFO material in the ...
Satterfield, Charles
Pseudonym used on four magazine stories by Frederik Pohl, 1954-1959, the first being a collaboration with Lester del Rey. [JC]
Sellers, Con
Working name of US author Connie Leslie Sellers (1922-1992), author of at least 100 novels in various genres. His sf work, a small and insignificant part of his output, begins with F.S.C. (1963); all of those noted in the Checklist are soft porn (see Sex). The list may be incomplete. [JC]
Patterson, James
(1947- ) US author who has become a chart-dominating best-seller over the past three decades, his greatest success being the Alex Cross sequence of crime thrillers featuring a Black forensic psychologist, where the occasional apparent incursion into the fantastic – such as the vampire cult in Violets Are Blue (2001), and the infernal "Mastermind" whose powers fall short of the supernatural – is found to be an evil but nonfantastic device. ...
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 ...