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
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
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 ...
Winterfeld, Henry
(1901-1990) German author, in Austria then France from 1933 because of his Jewish birth, in USA from 1940, an American citizen from 1946; he also wrote as by Manfred Michael and as by Henry Gilbert. The German-language publications of his first novel, Timpetill – Die Stadt ohne Eltern ["Timpetill: City without Parents"] (1937; trans Kyrill Schabert as Trouble at Timpetill 1963) was as by Manfred Michael; the English translation ...
Houser, Lionel
(1908-1949) US screenwriter, film producer and author of the medical fantasy Caress and Farewell (1934), in which a female surgeon attempts to create a custom lover whose short life will be utterly dedicated to her (see Medicine). [DRL]
Fairburn, Edwin
(1827-1911) New Zealand land surveyor, painter and author whose sf novel, The Ships of Tarshish: Being a Sequel to the "Wandering Jew" (1867 [but see Checklist]) as by Mohoao, which may be the first published novel by a native of New Zealand, is a kind of Future War tale in which an English descendant of the Wandering Jew saves beleaguered Britain with his futuristic ironclads (see ...
Lindall, Edward
Pseudonym of Australian author Edward Ernest Smith (1915-1978), in whose Near Future sf novel, Roar of the Lion (1969), a 1980s insurrection, modelled on the example of the Viet Cong, ignites an Island in the South Pacific; the major powers soon intervene. [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 ...