SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 14 June 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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Time Tunnel, The
US tv series (1966-1967). An Irwin Allen Production for Twentieth Century Fox Television/ABC TV. Created by Irwin Allen, also executive producer; very loosely based on Time Tunnel (1964) by Murray Leinster. Directors included Allen (pilot only), Sobey Martin and J Juran. Writers included Harold Jack Bloom, Wanda and Bob Duncan, Peter Germano, William Welch, Carey Wilbur ...
Faster Than Light
According to Special Relativity the velocity of light is limiting: no matter how objects alter their velocity relative to one another, the sum of their velocities can never exceed the ultimate constant c (the velocity of light in a vacuum); moreover, the measurement of c is unaffected by the velocity of the measurer. The apparently paradoxical implications of this statement are avoided because objects travelling at high velocities relative to one ...
Synge, J L
(1897-1995) Irish physicist and author whose best-known nontechnical work of nonfiction is Science, Sense and Nonsense (1951). His novel, Kandelman's Krim: A Realistic Fantasy (1957), features a long conversation in which an Orc, a Kea, a Unicorn and a Plumber discuss the concept of infinity and instruct a passing Goddess in the foundations of Mathematics. [BS]
Duchamp, L Timmel
(1950- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "O's Story" in Memories and Visions: Women's Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1989) edited by Susann Sturgis, and whose career initially concentrated on short fiction, assembled in various collections including Love's Body, Dancing in Time (coll 2004) and Like Shards of Rainbow Frolicking in the Air (coll 2025), the latter of which contains early examinations of ...
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 ...