SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 12 August 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 10 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Templeton, Timothy
Pseudonym of US author Charles Adams (? -? ), whose sf Satire on antebellum America, The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth; Or, the Little Quibbles of Great Governments (1856), though allegorized as a series of letters to Uncle Sam, does feature a voyage in a Balloon at such a speed that the Sun is overtaken. [JC]
Pfeffer, Susan Beth
(1948-2025) US author for children and the Young Adult market, prolifically from 1970, perhaps best known for the nonfantastic The Year Without Michael (1987). Of sf interest are two series. The VCR Time Travel sequence comprises Rewind to Yesterday (1988) and Future Forward (1989), whose young protagonists engage in generally lighthearted Time Travel, as enabled by their mysterious ...
Osborne, Cary G
(? - ) US author of the Iroshi series of martial arts novels, beginning with Iroshi (1995), about a female warrior ghosted by an ancient mentor, and who is transported into an sf venue – that is, a planet which though it is not Earth is described in Dying Earth terms – where tropes from Military SF are intermixed with mythical suasions from her secret ...
FTL [magazine]
1. Irish Amateur Magazine published by the Irish Science Fiction Association, Dublin with a succession of editors, starting and ending with John Kenny (#1-#2, #11), plus David Egan (#3-#4), Michael Carroll (#5-#6), David Egan (#7-#8) and Robert Elliott (#9-#10). It ran from March 1989 to Winter (December) 1991 ending (from issue #9 Summer 1991) as a trim, A4-size, glossy magazine of 28 rather packed pages. It was rare for Eire to have its own magazine ...
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 ...