SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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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Harman, Dominic
(1974- ) UK illustrator, active from around 1997, who deftly combines traditional techniques and digital technologies to produce a wide range of work, some of it no more than competently commercial, but much of it conveying an oneiric Sense of Wonder, usually through exorbitant but strictly controlled fantasy/sf landscapes and settings. His work as a whole has clearly been influenced by an extensive understanding of art in the Western ...
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The
Film (1953). Mutual Pictures/Warner Bros. Director Eugène Lourié. Written by Lou Morheim, Fred Freiberger, based on "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (23 June 1951 Saturday Evening Post; vt "The Fog Horn" in The Golden Apples of the Sun, coll 1953) by Ray Bradbury. Cast includes Paul Christian, Cecil Kellaway, Paula Raymond and Kenneth Tobey. 80 ...
Blacker, Terence
(1948- ) UK author, mostly for Young Adult readers and for younger children, active from about 1984; he is best known for his Ms Wiz stories for younger children, and has also written adult novels. Of sf interest is The Angel Factory (2001), in which the young protagonist's parents turn out to be Aliens who have adopted him for reasons not entirely to his liking. [JC]
Remes, Ilkka
Pseudonym of Petri Pykälä (1962- ), an author working largely in the Technothriller mode, and the best-selling novelist in his native Finland for much of the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Several of his works step over the line into sf, beginning with his debut novel Pääkallokehrääjä ["Death's-Head Moth"] (1997), an ...
Berezin, Fedor
(1960- ) Russian-Ukrainian soldier, author and, subsequently, politician, once lauded by the New Yorker as the "Russian Tom Clancy" for his prolific output of novels involving War and Military SF. He studied at the Engels Higher Anti-Aircraft Missile Command Air Defense School of the USSR, graduating in 1981 and serving as ...
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 ...