SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 13 July 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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Smith, Ella
(1933- ) US author of books on film stars; of some sf interest is Transference (1982), a tale treating the consequences of Identity Transfer unclearly, though with Gothic touches. [JC]
Lindblad, John
(1930-2011) Canadian journalist and author of Zap Day (1971), a very Near Future Technothriller in which the eponymous Holocaust is averted. [JC]
Stamper, Joseph
(1886-1974) UK author, whose peripatetic early life is recorded in his autobiography, Less Than the Dust; Or, the Memoirs of a Tramp. He is of modest sf interest for "The Bote Upon the Watter" (1933), a Time Travel tale whose unscrupulous protagonist takes a bevy of young women to various periods, including the era of Atlantis, but cannot hang on to them very long. [JC]
Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Chambers, John
(1922-2001) US makeup artist and medical technician. Chambers first began to learn such techniques performing reconstructive surgery and designing prosthetic limbs for wounded soldiers while serving in World War Two. Chambers is of most importance to sf for his work on the Alien race the Vulcans featured on the original Star Trek (1966-1969) Television series – for which he moulded Spock's ...
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 ...