SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 15 October 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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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Van Dyke, John Henry
(? -? ) US author whose self-published Flash sequence of occultish sf novels, comprising The Flash (1927) and Blended Worlds (1927), carries a variegated cast through Western-inflected landscapes, where Secret Masters are met in Underground fastnesses, advanced science is displayed, all within the frame of a plot seemingly designed – though it is not easy ...
Wallace, John
(1892-1968) Australian author of Invasion (1940), a very Near Future tale about the danger of Invasion facing Australia. [JC]
Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn
(1942-2025) US composer and author, more active in and better known for her occult and mystery tales than for her early sf, which is mostly restricted to work from the 1970s; she also wrote as Quinn Fawcett (with Bill Fawcett), Camille Gabor, Trystam Kith and Vanessa Pryor. After around 1980 she became (and remained) identified with the Saint-Germain sequence of fantasies about a sympathetic immortal Vampire of aristocratic ...
Reese, Jenn
(1970- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Valkyrie" in Sword and Sorceress XVII (anth 2000) edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley; many of her best stories were assembled as Tales of the Chinese Zodiac (coll of linked stories 2006 ebook); Jade Tiger (2006) is a martial arts fantasy. Of sf interest is the Young Adult Above World ...
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 ...