SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 April 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 April 2026
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Maugham, Robin
Working name of UK author Robert Cecil Romer Maugham (1916-1981), W Somerset Maugham's nephew; he is best known for a nonfantastic novel, The Servant (1948). His first publication, The 1946 Ms. (1943 chap), describes a Dystopian dictatorship founded, after the end of World War Two, by the British general responsible for defeating Hitler. [JC]
Glass, Mrs Charles Wilder
(1874-? ) US spirit medium and author, whose claim to have co-authored her three novels with a dead doctor whose spirit had been transported to Mars has not been corroborated; these novels, written in the belief that Percival Lowell had demonstrated the existence of canals on Mars, are Ruth's Marriage in Mars: A Scientific Novel (1912), Romance in Starland: A Scientific Novel (1915) and ...
It Came from the Desert
Videogame (1989). Cinemaware. Designed by David Riordan. Platforms: Amiga (1989); DOS (1990); rev PCEngineCD (1992). / Much influenced by the "atomic ant" epic Them! (1954), It Came From The Desert is suggestive of such contemporary films as Tremors (1989) in its loving homage to the Monster Movies of the 1950s. The game ...
Tales of the Talisman
US low-paying downloadable and print-on-demand letter-size Semiprozine published and edited by David Lee Summers at Hadrosaur Productions, Mesilla Park, New Mexico. The magazine is a direct successor to Hadrosaur Tales and appeared quarterly from Spring 2005 until publication ceased with volume 10 issue 4 (whole number #40) in Spring 2015. / Although the title suggests fantasy and magic Tales of the Talisman ...
Michener, James A
(1907-1997) US author of numerous bestsellers. His long novel Space (1982), televised 1985, is based on the history of the US space programme, becoming sf only in its later stages, when it describes invented missions and adventures roughly contemporaneous with the historical ones (e.g., a disaster owing to an outburst of solar radiation during an Apollo 18 lunar mission in 1973), and then peers optimistically into the Near Future. Among several ...
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 ...