SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 7 December 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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Black Terror, The
US Comic (1943-1949). Nedor Publishing Company/Visual Editions Inc. 27 issues. Artists include Al Camy, Mort Meskin, Ed Moritz, Jerry Robinson and Alex Schomburg. Scriptwriters include Donald Bayne Hobart, Richard Hughes and Charles S Strong. Originally 68 pages, then declining until #26 and #27 had only 36. Usually four long strips per issue, a couple with five, whilst #26 and #27 had three; there would also be at least one text ...
Ravn, Olga
(1986- ) Danish poet, journalist and author, active from around 2008, initially concentrating on poetry. Her first novel, the untranslated Celestine (2015), is a ghost story. She is of sf interest for Die Ansatte (2018; trans Martin Aitken as The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century 2020), set partly on primarily on Six Thousand Ship, a Starship currently orbiting the planet New ...
Yukimura Makoto
(1976- ) Japanese artist and author whose sole sf work to date gained him the premier accolade in Japanese Fandom, in two media. A drop-out from the Tama Art University in Tokyo, Yukimura became an art assistant to the Manga creator Shin Morimura before finding fame with his debut work Planetes (graph 2000-2004 Comic Morning; coll 2001-2004). Trading on gritty ...
Vornholt, John
(1951- ) US author who has also written as by Carolyn Goode, known chiefly for Ties: these include a long string of Star Trek: The Next Generation novels beginning with Masks (1989) and ending with A Time to Die (2004), plus other novels in the overall Star Trek universe; and the Babylon 5 novel ...
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 ...