SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 20 April 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 14 April 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Wooding, Chris
(1977- ) UK author, usually for the Young Adult market, and usually fantasy or horror, including his first novel, Catchman (1998). His most successful singleton is probably The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray (2001), whose Amnesia-ridden protagonist possesses unknowingly the key to understanding a post-Pandemic crime-ridden London ...
Wicks, Mark
(? -? ) UK author whose Scientific Romance To Mars Via the Moon: An Astronomical Story (1911) recounts the construction of a Spaceship capable of taking its bereaved solitary builder first to the Moon and then to Mars, which is described in accordance with the theories of Percival Lowell; ...
Kerigan, Florence
(1896-1984) US author of a Lost Race novel for the Young Adult market, The Secret of the Maya Well (1936); it is set in Mexico. [JC]
Manster, The
American-Japanese film (1959). Lopert Pictures/Shaw-Breakston Enterprises/United Artists of Japan. Directed by George P Breakston and Kenneth G Crane. Written by George P Breakston, based on a story by William J Sheldon. Cast includes Peter Dyneley, Jane Hylton, Jerry Ito, Tetsu Nakamura, Norman Van Hawley and Terri Zimmern. 72 minutes. Black and white. / Larry Stanford (Dyneley), an American journalist temporarily working in Japan, interviews a Japanese ...
Smith, Ali
(1962- ) Scottish author, active from the early 1980s, prominent from the beginning of the twenty-first century for incisive world-facing though non-fantastic novels, beginning with Hotel World (2001). There But For The (2011) surreally recounts the effects of a dinner guest's refusal to leave the room where he has locked himself in: echoes of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street" ...
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 ...