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Saturday 8 August 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.
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Mercier, Lewis Page
(1820-1875) UK minister, schoolmaster and translator, signing as Mercier Lewis and Louis Mercier; it has been surmised that a combination of career and financial difficulties forced him into the translation trade, and these pressures plus ill health may explain the occasional shoddiness of (and frequent cuts to) his translations of Jules Verne novels; the frequency with which they were reprinted remains anomalous. The degree to which his translations were ...
Hanifin, John M
(? -? ) US author, whose reported death circa 1898 seems unlikely as manuscripts in his name were being submitted for publication five years later; his Lost Race novel, The Blind Men and the Devil (1891) as by Phineas, describes the experiences of a married couple who, mistaken for dead, are dumped into a river and discover an Underground world inhabited by a blind race. ...
Mezo, Francine
(1935- ) US author whose Fall of Worlds/Areia Darenga series of Space Operas, comprising The Fall of Worlds (1980), Unless She Burn (1981) and No Earthly Shore (1981), features a female Starship captain (Areia Darenga) who also serves as a warrior mercenary in Military SF adventures covering a good portion of the Galaxy. ...
Tse, Dorothy
(1977- ) Hong Kong author, active from the turn of the century; her first collection, So Black [original Chinese title not traced] (coll 2005). Yīng tóu māo yŭ yīn yuè xiāng nǖ hái ["The Eagle-Headed Cat and the Music Box Girl"] (2020; trans Natascha Bruce as Owlish 2023) is set in a phantasmagoric City (clearly Hong Kong under surreal historical ...
Hillyer, Robert
(1895-1961) US poet who would not wish to be most remembered for his vehement opposition to the granting of the first Bollingen Prize in 1949 to Ezra Pound, on the grounds of modernism and treachery; he is of sf interest for a book-length poem, The Death of Captain Nemo: A Narrative Poem (1949 chap), which tells the story of the Jules Verne Antihero and ends with his death in 1945. Some of Verne's proto-noirish ...
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 ...