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Friday 13 March 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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McKay, Laura Jean
(1978- ) Australian author whose very Near Future novel, The Animals in That Country (2020), which won the Arthur C Clarke Award, describes a planetary Pandemic whose most radical effect is an opening of the gates of Perception – and, it may be, actual language (see Communication; ...
Nova – Fantastiske Fortellinger
Norwegian sf, fantasy and horror Magazine published 1971-1979 by the Stowa Forlag four to five times a year, with a total of 34 issues. Founded 1971 by the publisher and editor Terje Wanberg (1939-2006) it started as a translated editon of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction but became independent after the first two issues (September and October 1971); changing its name to ...
Rothman, Chuck
Working name of US author Charles Warren Rothman (1952- ), who began publishing sf with "The Munij Deserters" in Asimov's for 1982. Quarnian Dow, protagonist of his sf novel Staroamer's Fate (1986), has a Precognitive talent of uncertain value (when first encountered she is moneyless and near-desperate); this ability leads her unerringly to Earth's long-lost ...
Sinclair, David
(? - ) US author of a Young Adult Space Opera, The Gilead Bomb (1963), apparently intended to launch a series to be known as "Ace Astro and the Star Rovers"; Ace and the lads have adventures on the Moon. No further volumes appeared. [JC]
Kirk, Pauline
(? - ) UK poet and author of The Keepers (1996), a Dystopia set in a Near Future UK run by the eponymous Keepers on lines mildly evocative of George Orwell's Nineteen Eight-Four (1949), with fairly rife regimentation and some brainwashing. But a dissident group imports a virus into the Keeper's central ...
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 ...