SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 24 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.
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Silent, William T
Pseudonym of US author John William Jackson Jr (1945- ), author of Lord of the Red Sun (1972), which begins as a Space Opera but becomes a Planetary Romance. [JC]
Starburst
UK monthly nonfiction Media Magazine about sf, fantasy and horror, primarily in Cinema and Television. Small-Bedsheet slick format. Founded January 1978, first published by Starburst Magazines, London, edited by Dez Skinn, but soon taken over by Marvel Comics and edited Alan Mackenzie until #77 (January 1985), then by Roger P Birchall to ...
Presslie, Robert
(1920-2000) UK author who worked as a pharmacy manager in London; he is remembered for readable and occasionally memorable short fiction on conventional Genre SF themes. His first sale was "Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted" in Authentic for June 1955. Presslie was notably prolific in the late 1950s, twice achieving the feat of simultaneous publication in three major UK magazines: ...
Bell, Neil
Preferred pseudonym of UK author Stephen Southwold (1887-1964), born Stephen Henry Critten; he took the name Southwold from his birthplace in Suffolk, because he despised his father, for reasons made clear in the semi-autobiographical chapters which recur in many of his novels; though it has been stated that he changed his name to Bell by deed poll around 1930, this seems not actually to have happened. At least one posthumous volume is copyrighted "Mrs Stephen Southwald". Though he also wrote ...
Philips, Judson P
(1903-1989) US author active from the publication of "Room Number 23" (20 June 1925 Flynn's Detective Fiction), which is a locked room tale; most of the 100 or more thrillers written under both his own name, and as by Hugh Pentecost, the pseudonym under which he was best known, date however from the 1960s and 1970s. Of sf interest is Red War (1936) with Thomas M Johnson, a Near Future tale in which an accelerating War ...
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 ...