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Friday 10 July 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 7 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Price, Lissa
(? - ) US author of a Young Adult Dystopia, Starters (2012), set in a Near Future America devastated by a "genocide spore" that has killed off anyone not vaccinated; as only children and old people were vaccinated in time, the survivors occupy a world whose operational heart has been evacuated. Teenagers are induced to rent their bodies for short ...
McBain, Gordon
(1946-1992) US teacher and author who, in his brief sf career, wrote the moderately appealing but unremarkable Exoterra Young Adult sf series, The Path of Exoterra (1981) and Quest of the Dawnstar (1984), featuring in a Planetary Romance venue but expanding into fairly wide-flung Space Opera adventures. [JC]
Ya byl sputnikom solntsa
["I Was a Sputnik of the Sun"] Russian film (1959; vt I Was a Satellite of the Sun). Mosnauchfilm. Directed by Viktor Morgenstern. Written by Vladimir Kapitanovsky and Vladimir Shreiberg. Cast includes Vladimir Emelyanov, Konstantin Erofeev, Pavel Makhotin, Pavel Samarin, Georgiy Shamshurin, Anatoliy Shamshurin, Georgiy Vitsin and Nadezhda Vishnevskaya. 67 minutes. Black and white. / Obviously designed to be both educational and a piece of ...
Blanchard, Charles Elton
(1868-1945) US doctor and author whose The Nut Cracker and Other Human Ape Fables (coll 1911) contains at least one Apes as Human tale, and one involving a Lost Race; A New Day Dawns: A Brief History of the Altruistic Era (1930-2162 A. D.), A. E. 200 (1932) is a Utopia in which the humane suasion of science increasingly benefits humanity. Blanchard's ...
Donnell, D
Written D/Donnell: the usual signature of Dolly Donnell (1906-1994), US artist and wife of A J Donnell, who contributed some finely inked black-and-white interior artwork to 1940s SF Magazines. These began with three illustrations for "Strangers on the Heights" (Summer 1944) Startling Stories by Manly Wade Wellman. Further such work appeared in ...
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 ...