SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 5 September 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 31 August 2026
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Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Anton, Ludwig
(1872-1941) Austrian medical doctor and author whose Anglophobe novel Brücken über den Weltraum (1922; trans by Konrad Schmidt as "Interplanetary Bridges" Winter 1933 Wonder Stories Quarterly) describes the colonization of Venus. [JC]
Pullar, A L
(? -? ) Australian author whose Celestalia: A Fantasy, 1975 A D (1933) describes a series of volcanic Disasters that destroys Japan, causing its population to flee to China, and many displaced Chinese to flee south to Australia, which is taken over (see Imperialism; Yellow Peril). A white government of sort survives in ...
Wright, Farnsworth
(1888-1940) US editor and occasional author (twice using the pseudonym Francis Hard), uncle of David Wright O'Brien; he began to publish work of genre interest with "The Closing Hand" in Weird Tales for March 1923, becoming editor of that magazine in November 1924 after #13, and continuing in the post until December 1939, at which point he had produced 177 issues. Under his guidance ...
Ransome, Arthur
(1884-1967) UK journalist and author, active during World War One as a British secret agent working for MI6 in Russia while publicly supporting the Bolsheviks, before and after they came to power in 1917; his nonfiction Six Weeks in Russia in 1919 (1919) does not hint at any such involvement. He remains very much best known for his nonfantastic Swallows and Amazons series of children's books set initially in the Lake District, whose sixth ...
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 ...