SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 July 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 7 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Glasgow 2024 (Worldcon)
Williams, Phillip B
(1986- ) US teacher, poet and author whose first novel Ours (2024) takes place mostly in the eponymous quasi-magical Polder (see Utopia; Zone), founded in the 1830s near St Louis, Missouri, initially as a refuge for freed or escaped slaves (see Race in SF). Enemies attempting to reach Ours find themselves disoriented in the surrounding forest [for Into the Woods here and ...
Bakker, R Scott
(1967- ) Canadian author whose early work was Fantasy, but who has more recently published some sf work. The complex ongoing fantasy enterprise – which, under the overall title of The Second Apocalypse, comprises two series, the Prince of Nothing sequence beginning with The Darkness That Comes Before (2003) and the Aspect-Emperor sequence beginning with The Judging Eye (2008) – ...
Mascarenhas, Kate
(1980- ) UK psychologist and author; her sf novel, The Psychology of Time Travel (2018), is an Alternate History tale whose Jonbar Point is the Invention in 1967 of Time Travel, made possible through the Discovery of Faster Than Light radio waves. For several ...
Price, Georges
Pseudonym of French author Ferdinand Petitpierre (1853-1922), in whose sf novel, Les Trois Disparus du "Sirius" ["The Three Missing Men from the 'Sirius'"] (1896; trans Brian Stableford as The Missing Men of the Sirius 2015), three sailors whose ship has sunk have extraordinary adventures Under the Sea, finding an Ancient Egyptian ...
Byrne, Stuart J
(1913-2011) US screenwriter and author who began publishing sf with "The Music of the Spheres" in Amazing for August 1935. He was intermittently active after World War Two in the magazines, sometimes writing as John Bloodstone, a name he used also for some routine sf adventures, most notably the Star Man sequence [see Checklist below]. Also as Bloodstone, he wrote one Tarzan book, which the Edgar Rice ...
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 ...