SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 16 May 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 11 May 2026
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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
Page, Norvell W
(1906-1961) US author who specialized between 1930 and 1943 in Hero/Villain Pulp adventure, much of his production being novel-length stories for The Spider, featuring the eponymous nascent Superhero, whose powers and Weapons – including a thin silk web used for climbing buildings – always press the ...
Fixup
A term first used by A E van Vogt to describe a book made up of previously published stories fitted together – usually with the addition of newly written or published cementing material – so that they read as a novel. Aware that fixups are immensely more common in Genre SF than in any other literature in the world, we borrowed the term for the 1979 edition of this encyclopedia, and continue to use it now; an example is ...
Richards, Alfred Bate
(1820-1876) UK editor of the Morning Advertiser from 1870 until his death, playwright and author. For many years he was active as a propagandist for UK military preparedness, but The Invasion of England (A Possible Tale of Future Times) (1870 chap), published privately, had little impact, partly because it lacked any effective narrative frame. It was in any case much less well-written than Lt.-Col. Sir George T Chesney's ...
McMahon, Thomas Patrick
(? - ) US screenwriter and author, mainly of thrillers, in whose The Hubschmann Effect (1973) a new Drug is used in the apparent Genetic Engineering of a group of children, who cause chaos. He contributed at least one story to the Wildsidhe Chronicles Shared World fantasy sequence [not listed]. Thomas Patrick McMahon should not be ...
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 ...