SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award
A juried life achievement Award set up in memory of Cordwainer Smith by the Cordwainer Smith Foundation, intended to honour notable sf and fantasy authors who in the view of the judging panel either did not receive in their active period or no longer receive as much attention as they deserve. It was first presented to Olaf Stapledon at the 2001 Worldcon, and is now ...
Morgan, J M
Working name of US author Jill Meredith Morgan (1946- ), most of work has been horror for Young Adult readers as by Morgan Fields, Jill Morgan and Jessica Pierce. The Spider's Child series as by Pierce, beginning with The Spider's Child: Volume 1: Trapped (1994), is an early example of the fruitful fantasy topos in which the protagonist is trapped within a book [for Book and Story see The ...
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 ...
Thorne, Sally
(1981- ) Australian author for romance readers whose first novels are without fantastic content, but whose Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match (2022) mixes romance and sf, taking off directly from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Angelika Frankenstein, Viktor's sister, attempts with mixed results to emulate his creation of the ...
Rice, Elmer
First the pseudonym, then the legal name of US playwright and author born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein (1892-1967), active from around 1914. Of his plays, the closest to untrammelled sf may be The Adding Machine: A Play in Seven Scenes (performed 1923; 1923): this follows its protagonist, Mr Zero, from Suicide into heaven – which he despises because it is full of indecent creatures like Rabelais and Jonathan ...
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 ...