SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Vaughn, S K
Pseudonym of an unidentified American (? - ) screenwriter and author of thrillers, whose sf debut under this name is Across the Void (2019), a Space Opera whose protagonist awakens, apparently suffering from Memory Edit or perhaps straightforward trauma, as her NASA-built ship is broken and she is alone, except expectedly for an attendant AI. Her task is ...
Pausewang, Gudrun
(1928-2020) Czechoslovakia-born teacher and author, mostly in West Germany from around 1948, some of whose adult novels deal with World War Two in general and the Holocaust in particular. Of her nearly 100 titles, many are addressed to the Young Adult market, including Die Letzten Kinder von Schewenborn oder ... sieht so unsere Zukunft aus?: Erzählung (1983; trans Norman Wyatt as ...
Kelly, Ken
(1946-2022) Working name of US artist Kenneth William Kelly, who also signed works as Ken W Kelly and K W Kelly (though the unusual style of the latter signature misled some into incorrectly rendering his name as C W Kelly). A self-trained artist, Kelly served in the US Marines and, after returning to New York in 1968, garnered his first assignments with the help of his friend Frank Frazetta, to whom he was related in a convoluted manner and to whose studio ...
Hart, Rob
(1982- ) US publisher and author initially known for his Ash McKenna sequence of crime novels beginning with New Yorked (2015) [series not listed below]. His first sf novel, The Warehouse (2019), is set in a Near Future Dystopian coercive company-town-like Keep called "MotherCloud" whose inmates, under the rule of a megalomaniacal lord of the digital ...
Barry, C J
(? - ) US author most of whose books are nonfantastic romances; of sf interest is the loose Unforgettable romantic Space Opera sequence beginning with Unearthed (2003), all five tales set in an interstellar world whose plots and characters directly or indirectly revolve around planet Earth. Various members of the extended cast meet, intertwine, romance each other, have Sex. 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 ...