SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 22 June 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 16 June 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Forsyth, Frederick
(1938-2025) UK author who gained fame with his first novel, The Day of the Jackal (1971), and whose books are generally political thrillers. The Shepherd (1975 chap), however, is a sentimental Timeslip or ghost fantasy in which a pilot on Christmas Eve 1957 is saved from crashing by a World War Two pilot in an antique bomber: pilot and plane had been shot down on the Christmas Eve of 1943. ...
Manley, Delarivier
(?1663-1724) UK playwright and author who has come to be ranked along with Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood for the strength and wit of her work as an independent female writer (see Feminism). Her New Atalantis "scandal fiction" sequence [for a tentative indication of its complicated publishing history see Checklist] is an extended anti-Whig Satire of contemporary life, ...
Graham, Daniel, Jr
(? - ) US author whose Near Future sf novel, The Gatekeepers (1995), a private entrepreneur, frustrated by the left-leaning American government's refusal to occupy space proactively, sets up his own firm with his estranged wife's money, using modestly advanced Technology to create a weaponized private zone in near space in order to protect us (see ...
Acolyte, The
US Fanzine or Amateur Magazine published by Francis T Laney both solo and with coeditors, initially from Clarkston, Washington, District of Columbia, and later from Los Angeles, California. Fourteen issues from Fall 1942 to Spring 1946; US quarto paper; first produced by ditto (spirit duplicator) and from #2 or #3 by mimeograph (stencil duplicator). Schedule: quarterly. / The Acolyte ...
Twelve Hawks, John
Pseudonym of an unidentified US author (? - ); he has stated more than once that he is not a Native American. No works under any other name have been identified; the author known as Twelve Hawks is almost exclusively associated with one work, the Equipoisal Fourth Realm sequence comprising The Traveler (2005), The Dark River (2007) and The Golden City (2009), set in a ...
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 ...