SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 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 7 July 2025
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Thompson, Andrew
(? - ) UK playwright whose first commercially produced drama, In Event of Moone Disaster (performed 2017; 2017), makes structural and Feminist use of a real speech, "In Event of Moon Disaster", written for President Nixon in case the 1969 Moon landing failed. The play is divided into three interacting sections, set in 1969, 2017, and Near Future 2055. In ...
Appleton, Victor
A House Name of the US Stratemeyer Syndicate, used mainly on the Don Sturdy series, and on the four Tom Swift series, which together constitute a central example of the importance and persistence of the Edisonade in US sf; for a detailed Tom Swift Checklist, see Tom Swift. Howard R Garis wrote the first ...
Lafferty, R A
(1914-2002) US author who worked in the electrical business until retiring to write full-time in 1970; he came to writing only in his forties, publishing his first sf, "Day of the Glacier", in The Science Fiction Stories for January 1960. Over the next twenty-five years (he reportedly retired from writing at the age of about seventy) he produced very many stories – about 200 have been published – and a number of novels. The ...
Captain Rocket
US Comic (1951). One issue. P L Publishing Co, Inc. Artists unknown. / Captain Rocket "with his vast storehouse of scientific and technical knowledge, is the last hope of Earth's governing councils when things go wrong." In "The Graveyard of the Rocketeers" a paralysed navigator is the only survivor of the latest stolen space-cruiser, but Captain Rocket's mind reading device and thought projection screen enables the navigator to show his winning a ...
Mizuki Wakako
(1953- ) Japanese comics creator whose works were striking in girls' sf Manga in the 1980s, finding suitable support to win two Seiun Awards after the inauguration of a comics category. Mizuki describes herself as a product of the first-wave of Japanese comics written by women for women (see Year 24 Group), who worked for a year as a bank clerk before ...
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 ...