SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 July 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 14 July 2026
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Star Trek: Lower Decks
US animated tv series (2020-2024). 219 Productions, CBS Eye Animation Productions, Important Science, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout, Titmouse. Created by Mike McMahan, based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry. Directed by Kim Arndt, Barry J Kelly, Bob Suarez and Jason Zurek. Writers include Mike McMahan. Voice cast includes Eugene Cordero, Dawnn Lewis, Tawny Newsome, Jerry O'Connell, Jack Quaid, ...
Kilpatrick, Florence A
(1888-1968) UK playwright and author best known for her Elizabeth sequence of spoofish adventures featuring a slapstick but spunky Cockney lass; of sf interest in the series is Elizabeth in Africa (1940), where she runs across a Lost Race of Egyptians who remain hidden in a remote valley. Luckily for Elizabeth, the Mtangulizis have already been taught English by a previous visitor. [JC]
Morrow, W C
(1854-1923) US author who began selling short stories in 1879 and is generally thought of as primarily a writer of Horror, though some of the tales assembled in The Ape, the Idiot & Other People (coll 1897) are sf. His first venture into outright sf was "The Surgeon's Experiment" (15 October 1887 The Argonaut; vt "The Monster-Maker" in The Ape, the Idiot & Other People coll 1897), in which a ...
Alternity
Role Playing Game (1998). Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). Designed by Bill Slavicsek, Richard Baker. / Alternity was an attempt to create a generic system for role playing in science fiction milieux. It had limited success commercially, though much of the background material was reused in d20 Modern (2002) (see d20). The Alternity core rules are not linked to any specific setting; instead, ...
Game-Worlds
Although this term may be applied to imaginary worlds governed by the rules of ancient games like Chess, this encyclopedia chiefly applies it to worlds designed by the manufacturers of Games – almost always Role Playing Games (or Gamebooks) or computer Adventure games (see Videogame). In the case of RPGs the ...
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 ...