SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 19 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 18 February 2026
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Terrornauts, The
Film (1967). Amicus Productions. Directed by Montgomery Tully. Written by John Brunner, based on the novel The Wailing Asteroid (1960) by Murray Leinster. Cast includes Charles Hawtrey, Patricia Hayes, Zena Marshall, Stanley Meadows and Simon Oates. 75 minutes. Colour. / The head of a project to use a radio telescope to listen for signs of intelligent life, Dr Joe Burke (Oates), is rewarded for his ...
Locus
US Semiprozine (1968-current), edited by Charles N Brown (calling himself Charlie Brown in earlier days) until his death shortly after working on issue #582 (July 2009); further editorial staff provided support in the twenty-first century, with Jennifer A Hall and Kirsten Gong-Wong sharing credit for Locus's Hugo wins in 2003 and 2004, and Kirsten Gong-Wong and Liza Groen Trombi from 2006; Trombi has been ...
Irvine, Leigh H
(1863-1942) US journalist, editor and author, most prominently of several nonfiction books on California; of sf interest are An Affair in the South Seas: A Story of Romantic Adventure (1901), in which a drifter tells of his life in a Utopian colony, an Island where intermarriage and democracy flourish; and Legends of the Ozorans: Or, Love Tales of Long Ago (coll 1931 chap), which describes a ...
Graf, B J
(1970- ) US teacher and author whose first novel, Genesys X (2020), combines noirish police procedural and sf in a tale, set in a Near Future Los Angeles (see California) gripped by illegal Drugs and a Pandemic descended from Alzheimer's Disease. The protagonist, tracing the roots of much of this malaise to ...
Schoeman, Karel
(1939-2017) South African author who wrote primarily in Afrikaans. Of his many novels, Na die Geliefde Land (1972; trans Marion V Friedman as Promised Land 1978), which was filmed as Promised Land (2003), is of sf interest for its portrait of a Near Future South Africa stultified by the consequences of apartheid, and in which, after they have lost power, whites live marginalized existences. [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 ...