SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 10 June 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 8 June 2026
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Collin de Plancy, Jacques
(1793-1881) French demonologist and author, born without the aspirational "de Plancy", though he used the full name for much of his life; best known for his Dicionnaire Infernal ["Dictionary of the Infernal"] (1818), which he added and republished in various forms over several decades. He is of Proto SF interest for ...
Ballard, Isaac Fowler
(1826-1897) UK tax officer ("supervisor of excise") and author of The Prophetic Future of the Empire of Great Britain: Dedicated to her Royal and Imperial Majesty the Queen (1871 chap), in which the Battle of Dorking scenario is taken to predict a Future History in which Britain triumphs. [JC]
Science Fiction Quarterly
US Pulp magazine in two series: Summer 1940 to Spring 1943 (10 issues) and May 1951 to February 1958 (28 issues), published by Columbia Publications. The first two issues of the first series were edited by Charles Hornig, and all others by Robert A W Lowndes. / In its first incarnation Science Fiction Quarterly – a companion to Science Fiction (see ...
Viger, A
Pseudonym of French geophysicist and author Alphonse Berget (1850-1933), almost certainly the instigator of and senior collaborator in the sf novel L'Anneau de Lumière: grand roman scientifique d'aventures (6 November 1921-4 February 1922 Le Petit Parisien; 1922; trans Brian Stableford as The Ring of Light 2018) with Léon Miral, both signing variously as Miral-Viger, or L ...
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 ...