SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 9 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.
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Port Sinister
Film (1953; vt Beast of Paradise Isle UK). American Pictures Company/RKO Radio Pictures. Produced by Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen. Directed by Harold Daniels. Written by Wisberg and Pollexfen. Special effects by Jack Rabin. Cast includes Paul Cavanagh, Lynne Roberts, William Schallert and James Warren. 65 minutes. Black and white. / Port Royal was a pirate stronghold on an unnamed Caribbean Island which sank during an earthquake in the ...
Wetherell, June
(1909-2010) US journalist and author, mostly of historical romances with Gothic colouring, active from around 1941. Of her thirty-one novels, one is of sf interest, the Young Adult Blueprint for Yesterday (1971), set partly in a high-Technology Near Future Dystopia, and partly in a rural retreat, where, along with the young lad she falls in love with, the ...
Krofft Brothers, The
The Canadian puppeteer siblings Marty Krofft (1937-2023) and Sid Krofft (1929- ), of Greek/Hungarian origin with birth names Moshopopoulos and Cydus Yolas, were responsible for several well-remembered children's Television series. These began with The Banana Splits (1968-1970) for Hanna-Barbera – starring the titular puppet rock group – followed by their ...
Fantastic Story Quarterly
US reprint Pulp magazine, 23 issues Spring 1950 to Spring 1955, the title changing after Spring 1951 to Fantastic Story Magazine; published by Best Books, a subsidiary of Standard Magazines. Sam Merwin Jr was editor until Fall 1951, being succeeded by Samuel Mines and then by Alexander Samalman for the last two issues. / Most of the reprints were from ...
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 ...