SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 20 May 2025
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 19 May 2025
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Stanton, Paul
Joint pseudonym of E E Vielle (who see for details) and Ceylon-born pilot, psychologist and author David Beaty (1919-1999), in UK from an early age; Beaty wrote thrillers under his own name. Writing together as by Stanton, the two wrote Village of Stars (1960). [JC]
Jameson, Malcolm
(1891-1945) US author who began producing fiction only after cancer forced him to retire from a nonwriting life which had included a career in the US Navy. He began publishing sf with "Eviction by Isotherm" for Astounding in August 1938, and wrote prolifically, at least seventy stories appearing before his death; he published some work under pseudonyms including Colin Keith and Mary MacGregor. "Doubled and Redoubled" (February 1941 Unknown), ...
Chauvin, Cy
(1952- ) US fan and critic, active in Detroit fandom from the 1970s, publishing there an intermittent Fanzine, Seldon's Plan (1969-1985); he became active as a reviewer and commentator at about the same time. Chauvin is of general interest for the relatively early A Multitude of Visions (anth 1975 chap), an anthology of criticism whose contents have been sagaciously reprinted from Fanzines, where ...
Calder, Richard
(1956- ) UK author – in Thailand 1990-1996 and later in the Philippines until returning to London in the first years of this century – who began publishing sf with "Toxine" in Interzone: The 4th Anthology (anth 1989) edited by John Clute, Simon Ounsley and David Pringle; his early short fiction, almost always densely post-Cyberpunk in idiom and ...
Cryonics
A term coined in the 1960s by Karl Werner, referring to techniques for preserving the human body by supercooling. R C W Ettinger's The Prospect of Immortality (1964) popularized the idea that the corpses of terminally ill people might be "frozen down" in order to preserve them until such a time as medical science would discover cures for all ills and a method of resurrecting the dead. Many sf stories have extrapolated the notion. / 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 reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...