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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Titterton, W R
(1876-1963) UK journalist, biographer, poet and author, perhaps best known for his long friendship and professional association with G K Chesterton, which he commemorated in a biography, G K Chesterton: A Portrait (1947). He also published a life of George Bernard Shaw, So This Is Shaw (1945 chap). The title tale assembled in The Death Ray Dictator and Other Stories (coll 1946) ...
Power Sources
We live in an age of imminent resources crisis, anxiously anticipating the depletion of fossil-fuel reserves even while we become reluctant to rely on Nuclear Energy because of the Pollution problems caused by radioactive wastes and the necessary expense of decommissioning obsolete, contaminated installations. New options rely either on discoveries not yet made – the development of nuclear-fusion reactors, or of more ...
Testament
Film (1983). Entertainment Events/American Playhouse. Directed by Lynne Littman. Written by John Sacret Young, based on "The Last Testament" by Carol Amen (?1934-1987). Cast includes Jane Alexander, Leon Ames, William Devane, Lukas Haas and Ross Harris. 90 minutes. Colour. / We follow the ordinary, loving, quarrelsome life of one family in a small Californian town, Hamlin. Without warning, all US cities are destroyed by nuclear weapons. Hamlin, not far from San Francisco, is spared ...
Chandler, A Bertram
(1912-1984) UK-born author who served in the Merchant Navy from 1928, and who emigrated to Australia in 1956, where he commanded merchant ships under Australian and New Zealand flags until his retirement in 1975. This long professional experience permeated his writing, and many of his novels feature Spaceships and flotillas whose command structures are decidedly naval. Chandler began publishing with "'This Means War!'" in Astounding for ...
Owen, David
(? - ) UK journalist and author of Young Adult novels. His first, Panther (2015), rims Fantastika edgily in the story of a panther loose in London that the protagonist hopes to trap, in order to lift himself from depression caused in part by living in the suburbs. In The Fallen Children: They Will Rise (2017) a similar world is suddenly ...
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 ...