SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 July 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 13 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Godwin, Francis
(1562-1633) UK bishop and author, most noted for his striking description of a lunar Utopia in the posthumously and anonymously published The Man in the Moone: Or A Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger (1638). There is considerable debate over the date of composition, some suggesting it was written as early as 1588 after Godwin heard Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) lecture at Oxford, though most recent theories suggest it ...
Lurgan, Lester
Initial pseudonym of UK author and church worker Mabel Winifred Knowles (1875-1949), who was far more prolific under her later pseudonym May Wynne, which she used for something like 200 historical romances and girl's books between World War One and her death. As Lurgan, she wrote several thrillers between 1910 and 1913, and A Message from Mars: A Story Founded on the Popular Play by Richard Ganthony (1912), which novelized Richard Ganthony's ...
Walker, Rowland
(1876-1947) UK author of tales for boys. The Antihero of The Phantom Airman (1920) is a German airman unreconciled to the outcome of World War One, who establishes a pirate band whose depredations are made possible by a secret Invention; By Airship to the Tropics: The Amazing Adventures of Two Schoolboys (1923) unthreateningly deposits its protagonists in a ...
Clare, John
(? - ) Canadian editor and author of a Near Future spoof, The Passionate Invaders (1965), in which, 100 years after the last invasion, a group of Canadians known as the Snainef (i.e. Fenians) invade the United States. [JC]
Yates, Frances A
(1899-1981) UK academic and author, active from the mid-1920s, associated with the Warburg Institute from 1941 until her death. Her influence on sf has been indirect, though her ideas and discoveries have had a pervasive influence on authors of Fantastika in general, notably including John Crowley and Gene Wolfe (see Memory). Beginning with her first full-length ...
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 ...