SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 14 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 11 February 2025
Sponsor of the day: Glasgow 2024 (Worldcon)
Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Herbert, Benson
(1912-1991) UK editor and author with a master's degree in science who began publishing sf in US magazines with "The World Without" for Wonder Stories in February 1931 and was fairly active in the 1930s. Crisis! – 1992 (October 1935-January/February 1936 Wonder Stories as "The Perfect World"; 1936), with an introduction by M P Shiel, deals with the ominous passage of ...
Lifeforce
Film (1985). Cannon. Directed by Tobe Hooper. Written by Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby, based on The Space Vampires (1976) by Colin Wilson. Cast includes Frank Finlay, Peter Firth, Mathilda May, Steve Railsback and Patrick Stewart. 101 minutes. Colour. / Astronauts exploring Halley's Comet discover three humanoid Alien bodies in suspended animation in crystal containers in a derelict ...
Javor, Frank A
Working name of US author Francis Anthony Jaworski (1916-2003), who wrote an estimated 10,000 "how to" articles for service magazines; he also wrote as F A Javor. He published six stories in sf magazines in 1963 and 1964, his first such appearance being "Patriot" (August 1963 Analog); three tales were included in the Judith Merril Year's Best S-F series of anthologies. The Eli Pike series of sf novels – ...
Marvel Science Stories
US Pulp magazine, nine issues August 1938 to April 1941, revived for a further six issues November 1950 to May 1952; published by Postal Publications (first two issues), then by Western Fiction Publishing for the remainder of the first series, and finally by Stadium Publishing, all in New York, and all imprints of the publishers Martin and Abraham Goodman who would launch Marvel Comics in 1939. The first series was edited, uncredited, by Robert O Erisman ...
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 ...