SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 12 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
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Out of This World [comic]
US Comic (1956-1959). Charlton Comics. 16 issues. Artists include Steve Ditko, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, Bill Molno and Charles Nicholas. Most of the scripts were by Joe Gill. Usually 4-6 comic strips per issue (save for the double-length #7 and #8) and a two page text short-story (but two in #7 and #8, none in #12), mainly sf and supernatural horror. / In the ...
Rhodes, H Henry
(? -? ) US author of Where Men Have Walked: A Story of the Lucayos (1909), a complex Lost Race whose protagonist – trapped after dark adventures on a mysterious Island – spelunks deep Underground, where a strange figure Timeslips by trance backwards to a much earlier age, where an electricity-worshipping ...
Béraud, Henri
(1885-1958) French journalist and author, active from 1903, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1922 but now remembered more vividly for the contumelious anti-semitic anglophobic journalism he produced in support of the Vichy regime in France during World War Two, for which he was sentenced to death (sentence commuted). / At least two of his novels make use of sf topoi, though tentatively. Lazare (1924; trans Eric Sutton 1925; trans vt ...
Sadler, Barry
(1940-1989) US soldier, songwriter and author; his most famous song, "Ballad of the Green Berets" (1966), commemorated the Special Forces in Vietnam; he was imprisoned for 30 days in 1980 for voluntary manslaughter, after shooting a fellow songwriter who had been molesting a female neighbour. As an sf writer he was known exclusively for his series of Military SF adventures starring a mercenary named Casca – cursed with ...
Timescape Books
US sf publishing imprint, issuing both hardcover and paperback, whose logo first appeared in March 1981 and whose last titles were published in 1984. Timescape Books was formed by Simon and Schuster and Pocket Books (owned by the former), for both of whom David G Hartwell had been director of sf, and he was set in charge of the new imprint. It was named after the resonant title of Gregory Benford's successful novel ...
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 ...