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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American Flagg!
US Comic-book series (1983-1989, 63 issues), published by First Comics, created by writer/artist Howard V Chaykin. Generally considered one of the best sf Comics of the 1980s, American Flagg! is set in a media-saturated USA reduced to Third-World status, and stars Reuben Flagg, drafted into the Plexus Rangers in Chicago in the 2030s (Plexus being a Mars-based mega-cartel planning to sell off the ...
Farca, Marie C
(1935- ) US author whose first sf novel, Earth (1972), is a competent adventure involving an ecologically-sound culture attempting to cope with a Ruined Earth from within a Keep; confusingly, this planet, which the protagonist Andrew Ames has discovered, is called Earth, just as is Ames's home planet. The sequel, Complex Man (1973), is set on another planet (not called Earth), ...
Ballou, Arthur
(1915-1981) US business consultant and author of two Young Adult sf novels: Marooned in Orbit (1968), which features a mission to save a disabled spaceship in lunar orbit; and Bound for Mars (1970), featuring some of the same characters as the previous novel, about a space mission endangered by one of its crew after its leaves a Space Station en route to Mars. [JC]
Lea, Alec Richard
(1907-2003) Canadian-born author, in UK from childhood; the protagonists of The Outward Urge (1944) protagonists escape a Near Future totalitarian Dystopia via Time Travel to a better land, inhabited by Druids. [JC]
2300 AD
Role Playing Game (1987). Game Designers' Workshop (GDW). Designed by Marc Miller, Timothy Brown, Lester Smith, Frank Chadwick. / 2300 AD is a loose sequel to GDW's Twilight: 2000, referred to as Traveller: 2300 in the first edition, but renamed for the much improved 1988 second edition to prevent confusion with Traveller ...
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 ...