SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 16 September 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 14 September 2026
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Plato
(circa 429-347 BCE) Greek philosopher, included here partly because his dialogues Timaeus and its appendix Critias (circa 350 BCE) have been taken as examples of Proto SF in their vivid description of Atlantis, a fortified circular Island City on a plateau, embedding in a sketchy (but useful) narrative glimpses of a communal society. The sinking ...
Killus, James P
(1950-2008) US chemist and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Son of ETAOIN SHRDLU: More Adventures in Type and Space" for Asimov's with Sharon N Farber, Susanna Jacobson and Dave Stout in June 1981, publishing about twenty stories in all, most of them more ambitious than this initial vignette. His first novel, Book of Shadows (1983), is fantasy; his second, Sunsmoke (1985), undemandingly combines sf and fantasy in a ...
Spitz, Jacques
(1896-1963) French author who served in both World War One and World War Two; perhaps the central French sf author of the 1930s/1940s, whose Scientific Romances tended to the apocalyptic, and whose occasional uplift endings were riddled with doubt. His first sf novel, L'agonie du globe (1935; trans Margaret Mitchiner as Sever the Earth ...
Horton, Forest W, Jr
(? - ) US author of a Technothriller, The Technocrats (1980), revolving around a super-Computer in the wrong hands, and the justified Paranoia this causes when it turns out that the computer is running America via a proxy Android president. [JC]
Quintet
Film (1979). Lion's Gate/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Robert Altman. Written by Frank Barhydt, Altman, Patricia Resnick, from a story by Altman, Lionel Chetwynd, Resnick. Cast includes Bibi Andersson, Brigitte Fossey, Vittorio Gassman, David Langton, Paul Newman, Fernando Rey and Nina Van Pallandt. 118 minutes. Colour. / This strange film, critically crucified on release, is perhaps better than the then-consensus suggested. Newman is 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 ...