SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 July 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 13 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Nexxus
US professional Online Magazine produced by Richmond Wilson, Baltimore, Maryland. It ran for eleven quarterly issues, Winter 2001 to Fall 2003. Its former online issues can no longer be accessed and little from this magazine seems to have been reprinted. The Fall 2002 issue became memorable because one of its stories, "A Gift of Verse" by John A Flynn, was nominated for a Hugo award but had to be withdrawn because it was a reprint ...
Myers, John J
(1941-2020) US Catholic cleric, ultimately Archbishop of Newark 2001-2016, who collaborated with his friend (since childhood) Gary K Wolf on the short story "The Unhardy Boys in Outer Space" (in Amityville House of Pancakes, Volume 3, anth 2006, ed Pete S Allen) using the pseudonym Jehane Baptiste; the tale is set on the International Space Station. His second collaboration with Wolf, this time writing as ...
Onley, David C
(1950- ) Canadian television reporter (designated Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario in July 2007) whose sf novel is the Technothriller Shuttle: A Shattering Novel of Disaster in Space (1981), dealing with attempts to rescue the crew of a seriously damaged space shuttle in orbit. This concept seemed more science-fictional in 1981 than now. [DRL]
Open Universe
In cosmology an open universe is a model of the Universe which implies that it will continue to expand forever; in this general sense, the term is found incidentally in many sf novels. However, sf readers also use it in a quite different meaning: to designate a work or series whose characters and venues may be made use of by fans and others in Fanzines without copyright restrictions (although the original authors do sometimes impose constraints). The best known open ...
Horstman, Thomas
(? - ) US author of a borderline sf tale, The Kessler Alliance (1980), in which a cadre of Nazis hopes to rule the world as Hitler might have (see Hitler Wins for discussion of genuine Alternate Histories on these lines); a sense of Paranoia is duly stirred. [JC]
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 ...