SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 10 May 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 4 May 2026
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Conway, Gerard F
(1952-2026) US author informally known as Gerry Conway who began his career in Comics, writing some non-fantastic scripts for Marvel Comics, and editing the short-lived 1973 weird fiction magazine The Haunt of Horror and writing for the 1973-1975 anthology Comic Worlds Unknown. He also worked extensively for ...
Baruth, Philip
(? - ) US politician, academic, journalist and author of sf interest for The X President (2003), a Satire set in an Alternate History version of 2055, the Jonbar Point being Bill Clinton's 1990s dishonourable conciliation of the tobacco companies, which has led by stages to the current Cigarette Wars with America pitted against Russia and China. ...
Killer Klowns from Outer Space
US film (1988). Chiodo Bros. Directed by Stephen Chiodo. Written by Charles Chiodo and Stephen Chiodo. Cast includes Grant Cramer, Peter Licassi, John Allen Nelson, Michael S Siegel, Suzanne Snyder and John Vernon. 88 minutes. Colour. / Canoodling teenagers Mike Tobacco (Cramer) and Debbie Stone (Snyder) see a light fall from the sky; investigating, they find a circus tent (actually a Spaceship) in the middle of the forest. Entering, the pair observe ...
Murray, V T
(1874-1956) UK journalist, playwright and author of an Equipoisal fantasy/Scientific Romance, The Rule of the Beasts (1925), in which a homiletic journal, beginning in 1933 just as a devastating Pandemic initiates among its survivors a terminal World War Two, has been discovered in the fortieth century, when it is presented with scholarly ...
Messac, Régis
(1893-1945) French academic, translator and author who published widely under a number of pseudonyms, none of them used for stories of the fantastic. He was in active service throughout World War One, where his pacifism was confirmed; his later Communist affiliations (presumably) occasioned his deportation in 1943 by the German government and incarceration in various camps until his death, probably in January 1945, in the Gross-Rosen complex, or Dora, or ...
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 ...