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Monday 16 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.
Site updated on 9 March 2026
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Smith, Robert Charles
(1938- ) UK author, prolific in various genres under several pseudonyms, including Roger C Brandon, Robert Charles and Charles Leader. A Clash of Hawks (1975) as Robert Charles depicts a Near Future conflict between Israel and the Arab world; Flowers of Evil (1981) as by Robert Charles is horror; and Nightworld (1984; vt The Comet 1985), also as by Charles, is an expertly told but ...
Cochrane, Julie
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with Cally's War (2004) with John Ringo. This open the Posleen: Cally O'Neal trilogy, all written with Ringo and forming a subset of his Posleen Military SF Space Opera sequence, against which background the tough female operative Cally O'Neal stars in various noirish ...
Drink Tank, The
US Fanzine edited by Chris Garcia (some issues co-edited by James Bacon), published from California, 2005-current; electronic format. / From relatively humble beginnings as an outlet for Garcia's own writing, The Drink Tank has become (in part due to its remorseless frequency) a notable fanzine of the twenty-first century; it won the fanzine Hugo in 2011 after being nominated in every year from 2007 to 2010. While still featuring ...
Smile, R Elton
Working name of US physician and author Elton R Smilie (1819-1889), known for advances in the practice of anaesthetics. He is of sf interest for two intriguing (if confusedly told) tales. In The Manatitlans; Or, a Record of Recent Scientific Explorations in the Andea Lat Plata, S A (1877), a white expedition travels up the Paraguay River where it discovers a Lost Race descended from the Romans; they in turn introduce the expedition to a race of tiny ...
Barney, John Stewart
(1867-1924) US architect, artist and author whose sf novel, L.P.M.: The End of the Great War (1915), is an unusually authoritarian Edisonade in which an impatiently triumphal US Scientist – in this case his name is Edestone – uses the Antigravity device he has invented to render invincible his vast Zeppelin (see Airships) which is called the ...
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 ...