SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 8 August 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 3 August 2026
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Mule
Videogame (1983). Ozark Softscape. Designed by Danielle Bunten Berry. Platforms: Atari8, C64 (1983); MSX (1988); NES (1990). / MULE is an important link between traditional Board Games, played by people who are spatially and socially close to one another, and Online Worlds, often played by people who are spatially remote but socially close. Its gameplay ...
Garnier, Jean-Paul L
(1981- ) US editor, poet and author of mostly speculative fiction who also publishes as Jean-Paul Garnier. He is best known as the editor of Star*Line, the official print journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (now the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association). His editorship, beginning in 2021, has been marked by consistency and dedication. Dozens of poems ...
Norwood, Warren C
(1945-2005) US bookseller and author who has normally published as Warren Norwood, sometimes as Warren C Norwood; due to a publisher's error, some titles were published as by Warren G Norwood. After a number of years in bookselling, during which period he published some not particularly distinguished poetry, Norwood began his sf career with the Windhover Tapes sequence – The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices (1982), The Windhover Tapes: #2: Flexing the Warp ...
Allais, Alphonse
(1854-1905) French journalist and author, mostly of humorous pieces; his newspaper column, La Vie Drôle ["The Funny Life"] contained many skits and spoofs and other pieces, often fantastical. The various tales about Captain Cap appeared in this column and in other similar venues. Cap is based on a real person – Albert Caperon (1864-1898), a much-travelled adventurer and man about town – and Allais retired Captain Cap tales after Caperon's death, though he ...
Keene, Day
Pseudonym of US author Gunnar Hjerstedt (1904-1969), mostly of detective novels and film and television scripts. In his sf novel, World without Women (1960) with Leonard Pruyn, the few remaining women find themselves in Dystopian circumstances (see Women in SF), though it is (unusually) the men who are most often punished for violating scarcity taboos. [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 ...