SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 29 May 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 29 May 2023
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Wingert, Jennifer
(? - ) US author whose first novel, Spirit Fox (1998) with Mickey Zucker Reichert, is a fantasy whose female Hero uses Magic and martial arts, as well as the indwelling spirit of a ghost fox, to defeat an Invasion. Her second novel, Grasp the Stars (2004), is a wide-ranging ...
Rath, E J
Joint pseudonym of authors Chauncey Corey Brainerd (1874-1922) and Edith Rathbone Jacobs Brainerd (1885-1922), a married couple who died simultaneously when the Knickerbocker Theatre roof collapsed onto them. In the Near Future The Sixth Speed (1910) a disgruntled inventor applies his Invention – a yacht capable of carrying a substantial cargo at 120mph indefinitely – to piracy on the high seas, but is ...
Time Loop
The theme of a closed loop in Time appears in sf in two distinct senses. A classic form of Time Paradox (which see) comes into being when the chain of causality eats its own tail to leave a circular sequence of events with no logical starting point, as in Robert A Heinlein's two famous examples: "By His Bootstraps" (October 1941 Astounding as by Anson MacDonald) and "All ...
Pertwee, Roland
(1885-1963) UK actor, playwright, painter and author, related to many Pertwees, including his son Jon Pertwee (1919-1996), an early Doctor Who (see Doctor Who). His MW.XX.3. (1929; vt Hell's Loose 1929; vt The Million Pound Cypher 1930) is an early example of the tale of technological Paranoia. A dead scientist is discovered along with the eponymous formula for a cheap fuel which will if ...
Evans, Linda
(1958- ) US author whose first novel Sleipnir (1994) is a fantasy in which a modern GI intervenes in the world of Norse Gods and Mythology as Ragnarok looms. With Robert Asprin, Evans co-wrote the Time Scout sequence of Time Travel adventures beginning with Time Scout (1995), in which accidentally ...
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 ...