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Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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Liddle, Carl
(1897-1968) US journalist and author of Tunchi (1933) with David Thibault, an unusually well-researched Lost Race tale set in South America and attempting to present the possible characteristics of an ancient Amerindian civilization. [JC]
Mutiny in Outer Space
Film (1965). Hugo Grimaldi Film Productions. Directed by Hugo Grimaldi and Arthur C Pierce (uncredited). Written by Arthur C Pierce. Cast includes Carl Crow, Pamela Curran, James Dobson, Dolores Faith, Richard Garland, Glenn Langan and William Leslie. 82 minutes. Black and white. / Astronauts Gordon Towers (Leslie) and Dan Webber (Crow), returning from the Moon with samples from newly discovered "ice caves", stop at Space Station X-7 (see ...
Braine, Robert D
(1861-1943) US musician and author of Messages from Mars by the Aid of the Telescope Plant (1892), in which a shipwrecked sailor, finding the eponymous plant on the mysterious Pacific Island of Roxana, is seized by the natives, who transport him to a Lost World where they demonstrate to him the use of the plant to maintain Communications with Mars. The ...
Slocomb, Cora
(1862-1944) US author who became well known for her successful campaign to clear Maria Barbieri, an Italian immigrant woman, of an unsound conviction for first degree murder; Barbieri would have been the first woman to be judicially electrocuted; her case aroused widespread Feminist interest, though Slocomb herself was subject to death threats. Rather less gripping than these events, her novel, An American Idyll (1896; vt ...
Rajaniemi, Hannu
(1978- ) Finnish-born author, in the UK for nearly a decade and more recently in the US, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Deus Ex Homine" in Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction (anth 2005) edited by Neil Williamson and Andrew J Wilson, and who assembled in Worlds of Birth and Death (coll 2006 chap) a set of fantasy tales linked by a reiterated pattern, where a modern man or woman in psychic trouble is confronted with ...
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 ...