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Monday 16 February 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 16 February 2026
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Manvell, Roger
(1909-1987) UK author, mostly on aspects of World War Two and on the cinema – including The Animated Film: With Pictures Taken from the Film "Animal Farm" by Halas & Batchelor (1954 chap) (see George Orwell), a study of the first feature-length animated film to be made in the UK. His sf novel, The Dreamers (1958), is a tale of revenge via a dream transmitted to the intended victim by ...
Lloyd, Saci
(1967- ) UK cartoonist, singer and author. She is of sf interest for The Carbon Diaries sequence beginning with The Carbon Diaries 2015 (2008); couched in a Young Adult frame, it is shaped as the diary of a teenager/young woman written in a Near Future London where, due to violent weather Disasters, ...
Cool, Tom
(1954- ) US computer technician for the American Navy and, after his retirement, author of three action-oriented sf novels. In Infectress (1997), a terrorist engineers a virus (see Medicine) designed to return Earth to an idyllic pre-civilized state, and makes use of a stolen AI and nanoware (see Nanotechnology) to further this goal; Secret Realms (1998), ...
Gotthelf, Ezra Gerson
(1907-1981) US rabbi and author, whose sf Satire, The Island of Not-Me: A True Chronicle of the Life of Geoghan Willbe on The Island of Not-Me, Preceded by an Account of his Person Before his Arrival Upon that Famous Isle (1935), places on an Island a Utopia with totalitarian characteristic. It is written in a style distantly evocative of Jonathan Swift. [JC]
Parallel Worlds
A parallel world is another universe situated "alongside" our own, displaced from it along a spatial fourth Dimension (parallel worlds are often referred to in sf as "other dimensions"). Although whole universes may lie parallel in this sense, most stories focus on parallel Earths. The parallel-world idea forms a useful framework for the notion of Alternate History, and is often used in this way. Most of the "secondary ...
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 ...