SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 7 December 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.
Site updated on 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Astounding Science-Fiction
US magazine, pulp-size January 1930-December 1941, letter-size January 1942-April 1943, pulp size May 1943-October 1943, Digest-size November 1943-February 1963. It changed its title to Analog (which see) in 1960. Published by Publisher's Fiscal Corporation (a subsidiary of Clayton Magazines) January 1930-March 1933 and Street & Smith October 1933-January 1961, by which time the magazine had become ...
Barron, Neil
(1934-2010) US bibliographer and book editor, trained as a librarian, who received a Pilgrim Award in 1982 for his work; he has produced some of the liveliest and most readable scholarship in sf, notably in the five well-researched editions of Anatomy of Wonder: Science Fiction (1976; exp vt Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction: Second Edition 1981; further exp vt ...
Flying Saucers [comic]
US Comic (1950). One issue. Avon Periodicals, Inc (see Avon Comics). The comic is dominated by a three-part serial, "The Flying Saucers", drawn by Wally Wood. Explorer Ross Lanning is thrown into a pit of cold flame by outraged locals when he unwittingly trespasses upon sacred ground in the South American jungle. He survives and wanders through a cave system to discover a cavern filled with advanced ...
Bunts, Frank Emory
(1861-1928) US surgeon and author; he is of some sf interest for The Soul of Henry Harrington and Other Stories (coll 1916), whose title story describes at some length the deterioration of a doctor, who begins to behave like a Mad Scientist through his increasingly demented attempts (the last of them successful) to isolate the physical soul in the brains of cadavers; Equipoisally, souls once liberated, possess the ...
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 ...