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.
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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 ...
Jackson, Charles Loring
(1847-1935) US chemist, influential academic and author, whose The Gold Point and Other Strange Stories (coll 1926) contains several sf tales, including "The Cube", about an amoeba-like Monster capable of imitating human form and Identity Transfer, and "An Undiscovered Island in the Far Sea", in which two strange interrelated intelligent species are discovered on a Pacific Island. ...
Slipstream SF
A term devised, apparently by Bruce Sterling – in part as a pun on, or echo of, Mainstream – to designate stories which make use of sf devices but which are not Genre SF. The image is either nautical or aeronautical: a ship or an airplane (either of which stands for genre sf) can create a slipstream which may be strong enough to give non-paying passengers (Paul ...
Space Opera
A popular item of sf Terminology, echoing the practice (dating from the 1920s) of referring to Westerns as "horse operas", and more immediately the term "soap operas" (from 1938) for never-ending Radio series: when Radio was the principal medium of home entertainment in the USA, daytime serials intended for housewives were often sponsored by soap-powder companies, and hence the ...
DAW Books
New York publishing imprint founded by Donald A Wollheim in 1971 with assistance from New American Library, after his departure from Ace Books; the first titles appeared in 1972. DAW Books – the name derives from Wollheim's initials, though Wollheim's wife, Elsie Wollheim (1910-1996), has been described as the effective co-founder of DAW Books – publishes only sf and ...
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 ...