SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 20 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.
Site updated on 16 June 2025
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Forsyth, Frederick
(1938-2025) UK author who gained fame with his first novel, The Day of the Jackal (1971), and whose books are generally political thrillers. The Shepherd (1975 chap), however, is a sentimental Timeslip or ghost fantasy in which a pilot on Christmas Eve 1957 is saved from crashing by a World War Two pilot in an antique bomber: pilot and plane had been shot down on the Christmas Eve of 1943. ...
Post, Samuel H
(1924-2005) US editor, publisher and anthologist, both of whose sf Anthologies were edited anonymously. The 6 Fingers of Time and Other Stories (anth 1965) assembles six stories from If 1959-1961 (although the cover credits them to Galaxy), the title novella by R A Lafferty having originally appeared as "The Six Fingers of Time" (September 1960 ...
Rayner, Mark A
(? - ) Canadian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Any Port in a Storm" for Parsec for Summer 1999; in The Amadeus Net (2005), an Immortal Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has survived into the Near Future, where – after a world-shaking Disaster – he has assisted in the construction of a ...
Hurwood, Bernhardt J
(1926-1987) US author of various sorts including detections and a very early manual on adjusting to the Computer age: Writing Becomes Electronic: Successful Authors Tell How They Write in the Age of the Computer (1986). He wrote and edited occult and horror titles for the Young Adult market, like Strange Curses (coll 1975) and By Blood Alone (1979); the Man from T.O.M.C.A.T. soft-porn ...
Vargo Statten Science Fiction Magazine
UK magazine published by Scion, London, for the first seven issues, then Dragon Publications; edited by "Vargo Statten", a pseudonym of Alistair Paterson (1902-1976) for seven issues, and thereafter of John Russell Fearn. 19 issues, January 1954 to [February] 1956. Nominally monthly, but see below. / All but the first two issues were undated. The first three issues were standard Pulp size, if a little thin, then large ...
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 ...