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Sunday 12 April 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 6 April 2026
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Fripp, Robert
(1946- ) UK musician, best known for founding King Crimson. Fripp has released a great many solo albums and collaborations with various other artists, often avant-garde and experimental in style. With Brian Eno he recorded the instrumental No Pussyfooting (1973), an evocatively droning and repeating work. The titles of its two tracks "The Heavenly Musical Corporation" and "Swastika Girls" both ...
Adams, Norman
(1933-2014) US illustrator, active from the early 1950s, often signing his work Adams, which has occasionally led to some confusion with the work of Tom Adams, as both specialized in trompe l'oeil effects, in both cases sometimes startlingly effective. Adams may be best known for his cover for the first edition of Larry Niven's World of Ptavvs; the image itself closely replicates his cover for an 1963 UK reprint, as ...
Wludyka, Peter
(1942- ) US academic and author whose The Past Is Another Country (1988; vt USSA: The Past is Another Country: A Novel of Alternate History 2010) describes an America, 143 years after a Russian invasion, in which thought-control is almost complete. The young protagonist discovers some of the truth about Christ and the disappeared city of New York, but only at great cost. Unfortunately for ...
Drake, David A
(1945-2023) US lawyer, publisher and author who served in the US Army in Vietnam 1969-1971 and then as the Assistant Town Attorney in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1972-1980, becoming a full-time writer in 1981, although his first story, the H P Lovecraft pastiche "Denkirch", had appeared much earlier, in Travellers by Night (anth 1967) edited by August W Derleth. The wide success of his various ...
Crow, Martha Foote
(1854-1924) US poet and author of The World Above: A Duologue (1905 chap), a short play of interest for its depiction of an Underground Dystopian Pocket Universe, from which the two protagonists escape, upwards into the surface world. [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 reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...