SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 29 September 2023
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 25 September 2023
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Reizin, P Z
(? - ) UK Television and print journalist and author whose first novel, the Near Future Happiness for Humans (2018), explores the increasingly invasive interface between Homo sapiens and AIs, whose access to their human "users" is shown as having grown exponentially, with dangerous consequences when (as here) the AI in question gains consciousness. ...
Doyle, Arthur Conan
(1859-1930) Scottish author known primarily for his work outside the sf field and in particular for his Sherlock Holmes stories (see Sherlock Holmes). Born in Edinburgh and educated by Jesuits, he studied medicine at Edinburgh University and initiated his own practice in Portsmouth in 1882, having already begun to publish fiction, beginning with "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley" (6 September 1879 Chamber's Edinburgh Journal), followed by his ...
Betancourt, John Gregory
(1963- ) US editor and author who became involved in Small-Press publishing in his teens, beginning to publish short fiction with "Vernon's Dragon" in 100 Great Fantasy Short Short Stories (anth 1984) edited by Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr and Martin H Greenberg; an earlier sale was the poem "The Argia" ...
Jenks, William
(1778-1866) US clergyman and author whose Future History, Memoir of the Northern Kingdom, Written, A D 1872 [for full title see Checklist below] (dated 1901 but 1808), describes the world as of the date of its claimed composition. Politics dominates the account. America has been split into three parts: the Southern States, now a monarchy under the influence of France; the Northern States, at peace with Canada due ...
Toki o Kakeru Shōjo
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui is one of the staples of Young Adult science fiction in Japan. First serialized in magazines for third-year middle-school and first-year high-school students in 1965, it has been novelized, rewritten, and adapted into many variants in the ensuing decades, each displaying unique features of the zeitgeist. As with James ...
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 ...