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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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Warren, Kaaron
(1965- ) Australian author, best known for supernatural horror tales like her first novel Slights (2009), which won a Ditmar Award for best novel. She began publishing work of genre interest with "The Blue Stream" in Aurealis for October 1994; this tale was assembled with other early work as The Grinding House (coll 2005; vt The Glass Woman 2007). Further collections ...
Bacon, Paul
(1923-2015) US graphic artist active from the 1940s until about a year before his death, and responsible for an estimated 6500 book-cover designs (plus some 200 for jazz LPs). Inevitably, with such a huge total of covers, quite a number were for sf authors, well over seventy of them, some of whom published several books with his covers; his first in the genre is probably that for Gunner Cade (1952) by Cyril Judd. He became known for the "Big Book ...
Monster Fantasy
Letter-size perfect-bound Cinema magazine printed on cheap newsprint. Published by Mayfair Publications Incorporated. Editor: Tony Tallarico. Four issues, April to August 1975; initially bimonthly with the final issue claiming a monthly schedule. / This companion publication to Quasimodo's Monster Magazine differed somewhat from its parent in that each issue featured a "book" of sorts on a specific theme such as ...
Oppenheim, Josephine Greve
(1849-1915) US author, who wrote as by John Emersie and as by A O (she was married to Ansel Oppenheim from 1869). She is of sf interest for Allisto: A Romance (1884 as by John Emersie; cut vt Evelyn: A Tale of the West and the Far East 1904 as by A O), whose protagonist, the mysterious Allisto, may be the scion of a stock superior to Homo sapiens, but whose Telepathic powers do not give him respite. Before his death, he conveys to ...
Minnett, Cora
Pseudonym of Australian actress and author Minnie Warren Jones (1868-? ), who also wrote as Pellew Hawker; in England from 1910 until at least 1918, when [according to Steve Holland's researches; see under links below] all trace of her is lost. According to Holland's research, she seems to have been a confidence artist, selling non-existent or misdescribed Australian plots of land to English victims. Of sf interest is one novel, ...
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 ...