SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 8 February 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 3 February 2025
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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Peterson, Margaret
(1883-1933) UK author three of whose novels have some sf interest: Deadly Nightshade (1924), a Lost Race tale in which a civilization of Ancient Egyptians is discovered in Africa, guarded by a race of ape-people (see Apes as Human) and ruled by a She figure; Moonflowers (1926), which features, unusually, a female ...
Morphett, Tony
(1938-2018) Australian screenwriter and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Litterbug" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from July 1969, and who co-wrote The Last Wave (1977), co-written and directed by Peter Weir, whose last image – of a vast wave from the deeps of the ocean about to flood Australia – has become famous. Morphett's books of sf interest in his own right ...
Wallace, Edgar
(1875-1932) UK playwright, editor and author, father of Bryan Edgar Wallace; he is best known for his many thrillers, though he was also variously active as an sf writer from the beginning of his active career: the Just Men thriller sequence features occasional sf or Technothriller elements, such as a vast revolutionary movement's use of an Airship to bomb ...
Van der Graaf Generator
UK prog-rock band comprising Peter Hammill, Hugh Robert Banton (1949- ) and Guy Evans (1947- ). Highly regarded in the narrow world of English prog, the group released a series of musically soursweet and ornately complex albums whose obscure lyrics trace out fantastical versions of ordinary life that shade, often, into a more structured fabulation. The first album, The Aerosol Grey Machine (1969), ...
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 ...