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Sunday 16 November 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 10 November 2025
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Cárdenas, Juan
(1978- ) Colombian translator, editor and author, active from around 2005; he is primarily of sf interest for his third novel, Ornamento (2015; trans Lizzie Davis as Ornamental 2020), which is built around what happens to four separate women subject to an experimental study using a highly addictive Drug that affects women only. The doctor responsible becomes deeply involved with one of the experimental studies, who ...
Kjelgaard, Jim
(1910-1959) US author, usually of adventure novels for children, most of them about animals or set in the natural world, of which Fire-Hunter (1951) is of interest as a competent example of Prehistoric SF; the protagonist of the tale responds to challenge with several culture-transformative Inventions. He wrote some stories, probably all horror, for Weird Tales, plus one collaboration ...
Conklin, Groff
(1904-1968) US editor who began his career as manager of Doubleday Book Stores 1930-1934, and who intermittently held various editing positions, in and out of commercial publishing, for the rest of his life; he was, however, primarily a freelance. The first of his many sf Anthologies was The Best of Science Fiction (anth 1946; vt The Golden Age of Science Fiction 1980), a huge compendium which vied in size and potential influence with ...
It Happened Here
Film (1966). Rath/Lopert. Directed by Kevin Brownlow, Andrew Mollo. Written by Brownlow, Mollo. Cast includes Honor Fehrson, Fiona Leland, Pauline Murray and Sebastian Shaw. 99 minutes, cut to 93 minutes. Black and white. / Alternate-History stories are rare in sf cinema. This UK film is an exception; it shows what might have happened had Nazi Germany successfully invaded the UK (see Hitler Wins). Shot in a ...
Vivian, E Charles
Working name of UK editor and author of popular fiction (1882-1947), born Charles Henry Cannell but apparently changing his name legally to Evelyn Charles Henry Vivian on joining the army at the age of 18, ultimately serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War One; he wrote some non-genre novels as Charles Cannell, and some short fiction as by Sydney Barrie Lynd, Galbraith Nicolson and A K Walton. Some of that short fiction – including "The ...
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 ...