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Tuesday 13 October 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 12 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Lafferty, R A
(1914-2002) US author who worked in the electrical business until retiring to write full-time in 1970; he came to writing only in his forties, publishing his first sf, "Day of the Glacier", in The Science Fiction Stories for January 1960. Over the next twenty-five years (he reportedly retired from writing at the age of about seventy) he produced very many stories – about 200 have been published – and a number of novels. The ...
Porter, David Dixon
(1813-1891) US naval officer, the second to be appointed Admiral, a prominent figure in the American Civil War, later superintendent of the Naval Academy at Annapolis; of several novels published late in his life, The Adventures of Harry Marline; Or, Notes from an American Midshipman's Lucky Bag (1885) is a Lost Race tale for boys, involving Monsters of the deep and other strange encounters. [JC]
Wood, Edward
(1926-1996) US fan, bibliographer, collector and critic, active in Fandom from the mid-1940s. He edited the important early Fanzine about sf, The Journal of Science Fiction (4 issues Fall 1951-October 1953) with Charles Freudenthal and (first issue only) Lester Fried, an aspiring Academic Journal whose second issue (October 1952) was devoted wholly to Wood's bibliographical checklists of the ...
Cox, Stephen R
(? - ) US soldier and author who wrote initially, as by Ben Sloane, the Horn sequence beginning with Horn: Hot Zone (1990) featuring a Cyborg police officer named Max Horn in Near Future New York. As the adventures escalate, his built-in Weapons are enhanced, regularly. The Mutant Hunter sequence beginning with ...
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 ...