SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 7 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 6 October 2026
Sponsor of the day: Kees van Toorn and LAcon V
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 ...
DiSilvestro, Roger L
(1949- ) US author whose first novel of genre interest was Ursula's Gift (1988), a humorous fantasy. His second, Living with the Reptiles (1990), spoofs the ethical tomfooleries of that form of the Time-Travel tale in which the protagonist changes history to save/destroy/play with the future. In this case the protagonists, after acquiring the necessary equipment in what remains of the Amazon jungle, pass into the ...
Johnson, Kenneth R
(1948- ) US bibliographer whose main work, undertaken with Jerry Boyajian, was a series of indexes to the SF Magazines: Index to the Science Fiction Magazines 1977 (1982 chap), 1978 (1982 chap), 1979 (1981 chap), 1980 (1981 chap), 1981 (1982 chap), 1982 (1983 chap) and 1984 (1985 chap). Both authors also ...
McIlroy, Alice
(? - ) UK author in whose first novel, The Glass Woman (2024), a woman awakens in a state of Amnesia after an apparently voluntary Memory Edit, with an AI implanted in her brain. Her memories are now owned by the corporation she works for. The tale is told with moments of Paranoid intensity that approach the allegorical. [JC]
Nine Inch Nails
US heavy-metal rock group, also sometimes credited as NIN, and founded by songwriter and frontman Trent Reznor (1965- ). The band's aggressive, abrasive and very loud music often articulates Dystopian sentiments, most powerfully on the double-album The Fragile (1999), a vision of contemporary life as nightmare. Year Zero (2007) is an sf concept album that takes place in a militaristic and ...
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 ...