SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 17 May 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 16 May 2025
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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Knapp, George L
(1872-1950) US journalist and author, whose The Face of Air (1912) is set on an apparently deserted ship "haunted" by an ape whose Invisibility is the result of a chemist's misapplied Invention. [JC]
Tilley, Robert J
(? - ) UK jazz musician, graphic designer and author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Devil and Mr Wooller" in Ellory Queen's Mystery Magazine for September 1955; almost all his short work appeared by 1972, and was assembled as The Dark Corners: Fantastic Crime Stories (coll 2014) and Something Else: The Best Science Fiction Stories of Robert J Tilley (coll 2015). His stories are crisply told, ...
Carlisle, Anne
(?1956- ) US film actress and author who co-wrote the film Liquid Sky (1982) directed by Slava Tsukerman, and later novelized her script as Liquid Sky (1987). Both film and book display elements of spoof Gothic: Aliens are discovered in New York harvesting humans for the addictive chemical they give off at the moment of orgasm (see Sex), but ...
Frith, Henry
(1840-1917) Irish-born civil engineer, translator and author, in England from early adulthood; mostly known for his translations from the French, at least six being of novels by Jules Verne, beginning with Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (trans 1876). He is credited with a short story of sf interest, "The Balloon of the Future" (May 1885 Cassell's Family Magazine) (see Balloons), and an adaptation, which may ...
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 ...