SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 July 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 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Fleischer, Max
(1883-1972) Polish-born animator, inventor, film producer and author, in US from 1887. His invention of the Rotoscope (patented 1915), allowing animated figures to be traced from live action images, was significant in the early history of cartoon Cinema. With his brothers Dave Fleischer (1894-1979) and Lou Fleischer (1889-1976), he founded Fleischer Studios in 1921, where he made a short documentary, The Einstein Theory of Relativity (1923) (see ...
Young, Neil
(1945- ) Canadian guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and occasional author and filmmaker, a major figure in country rock in particular, and a considerable influence on a wide range of guitarists since the 1960s, solo and in the groups Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. His most prominent sf lyric is the beautifully plangent title track to After the Gold Rush (1970), a prescient tale of environmental ...
Ruth, Rod
(1912-1987) Working name of American artist Rodney Ruth. After growing up in a rustic area near Lake Michigan, which inspired a lifelong devotion to nature, Ruth moved to Chicago to receive artistic training at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the Frederick Mizen School of Arts, and the Institute of Design. Some freelance work eventually led to regular employment as a staff artist for the Chicago-based Ziff-Davis magazines, which included the sf magazines ...
Maloney, Mack
Pseudonym of US author Brian Kelleher (1952- ) for two sequences, the first being the Wingman series of Military SF sf novels set in a Ruined Earth America, beginning with Wingman (1987), pausing for well over a decade after Wingman #16: The Tomorrow War (1999), and resuming with Wingman #17: Attack on Area 51 (2013). The more ambitious Starhawk ...
Emmerson, Steve
(? - ) UK author of two Doctor Who Ties: Casualties of War (2000), set at the end of World War One as (or so it seems) the dead are rising; and Dark Progeny (2001), in which an arrogant Terraforming of the planet Ceres Alpha backfires. [JC]
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 ...