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.
Site updated on 8 June 2026
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
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 Trax
US tv series (1993-1994). Gary Nardino Productions in association with Lorimar Television. Created by/Co-executive producer Harve Bennett, Jeffrey Hayes, Grant Rosenberg. Executive producer Gary Nardino. Cast includes Elizabeth Alexander, Peter Donat, Dale Midkiff and Mia Sara. Writers include Bennett, Harold Gast and David Loughery. Two-hour pilot January 1993, written by Bennett, directed by Lewis Teague. 44 one-hour episodes in all. / Another ...
Flying
This entry covers some sf depictions of personal flight using strap-on wings, jet packs and other wearable rather than vehicular devices. For discussion of larger flying machines, see Airships, Balloons, Pax Aeronautica and Transportation. For self-levitation by means of Psi Powers, see ...
Künsken, Derek
(1971- ) Canadian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Tidal Maneuvers" in On Spec for Fall 2006. Most of his later work fits into two connected Hard SF series. The Quantum Universe sequence beginning with The Quantum Magician (January-May 2018 Analog; 2018) follows the life and exploits of a ...
Bedford, David
(1937-2011) UK composer and musician. Best known for his collaborations with Mike Oldfield – for instance his orchestral version of Tubular Bells as The Orchestral Tubular Bells (1974) – Bedford was also a skilled composer of popular and avant-garde classical music. His Star Clusters, Nebulae and Places in Devon (1971), scored for two eight-part choirs with a five horn brass group, is low-key, unstrained and ...
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 ...