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Tuesday 21 March 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.
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Barnhouse, Perl T
(1877-1964) US farmer and author of a touristic sf novel, My Journeys with Astargo: A Tale of the Past, Present and Future (1952), in which spherical Antigravity-powered Spaceships are built – the initial Pioneerer being replaced by the Astargo – and various planets visited. As Damon Knight noted in In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction ...
Noyes, P J
(1844-? ) US author whose collection of spoofish tales about the medical profession, Why Doctor Dobson Became a Quack and Other Stories (coll 1910), contains several sf stories, at least on of which involves out-of-contro Inventions. Parker Jewitt Noyes should not be confused with Parker Jewett Noyes (1842-1912), an eminent druggist. [JC]
Kettle, Leroy
(1949- ) UK fan, now-retired civil servant – he received an OBE in 2006 for his work on disability rights – and author. His Fanzines Fouler (six issues 1970-1972, numbered 2 to 7), with Greg Pickersgill, and the witty solo True Rat (ten issues 1973-1978) were central to 1970s London Ratfandom; the best of this fanzine work has been assembled as True Rat: The Beast of Leroy Kettle ...
Boye, Karin
(1900-1941) Swedish poet and author, whose first-hand experience of the fall of Weimar Germany during 1932-1934 directly influenced the work for which she is best-known by English-language readers, the Dystopia Kallocain (1940; trans Gustav Lannestock 1966), one of the several great dystopias set in a dreaded Near Future to have appeared in the decades-long aftermath of ...
Page, Kathy
(1958- ) UK author, in Canada from 2001, whose first novels – Back in the First Person (1986) and The Unborn Dreams of Clara Riley (1987) – are associational, though tinged with elements of literary fantasy. Island Paradise (1989), set a century after the Unfought War, promulgates an ambiguous worldwide Utopia whose citizens enjoy lives uncluttered by violence, but are bullied to die soon ...
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 ...