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Saturday 11 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.
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Payson, William Farquhar
(1876-1939) US author whose explanation, in John Vytal: A Tale of the Lost Colony (1901), of the disappearance around 1584 of the inhabitants of Roanoke Island (in what would become the state of Virginia) is made into a tale with Lost Race implications. [JC]
Cunningham, Beall
Working name of Dorothy Beall Cunningham (? -?), author of Wide White Page (1936), a tale featuring a modern Utopia founded in the Antarctic whose all-male equilibrium is upset by the arrival of a woman (see Women in SF); she is duly asked to leave. Cunningham also published at least three nonfantastic novels under her full name. She was alive in 1970. [DRL]
Antczak, Stephen L
(1966- ) US author, former punk rock singer and Comics creator who attended the University of Florida in Gainsville and began to publish work of genre interest with "Shit Happens" in the Fanzine The Scanner #5 (1989) as Steve Antczak. His first novel God Drug (2004) has a back-story in which the US Marines test the titular Drug, a weapons-grade form of LSD, in hope of ...
Resident Evil [film]
Film (2002; vt Biohazard: Genesis). Constantin Film/Davis Films present a Constantin Film/New Legacy Film production in association with Davis Films and Impact Pictures. Directed by Paul W S Anderson. Written by Anderson, based on the Videogame Biohazard (Japan), also known as Resident Evil (USA). Cast includes Milla Jovovich, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy and Michelle ...
Venturini, Fred
(1980- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Threshold" (in Sick Things: An Anthology of Extreme Creature Horror, anth 2010, edited by Cheryl Mullenax), and whose Young Adult first novel, The Samaritan (2011; vt The Heart Does Not Grow Back 2014), also makes use of Horror in SF tropes to give verisimilitude to the story of a highschool ...
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 ...