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.
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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 ...
Parasite Murders, The
Film (1974; vt They Came from Within; vt Shivers). Cinepix/Canadian Film Development Corp. Written and directed by David Cronenberg. Cast includes Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, Alan Migicovsky, Joe Silver and Barbara Steele. 87 minutes, cut to 77 minutes. Colour. / In an attempt to develop a beneficial symbiote, a scientist creates a parasite (see Parasitism and Symbiosis) that, when it ...
Webster, F A M
(1886-1949) UK soldier, athletics coach and author, in active service during World War One, who also published as by Michael Annesley; much of his work related to athletics, his best known book in this area being perhaps the nonfiction Athletes in Action (1931). His first novel, The Hound of Cullen (1918), is a mythical fantasy featuring Cuchulhain. His fiction more than once concentrated on mysteriously sapient species (see ...
Beason, Doug
(1953- ) US author and officer in the USAF with a PhD in physics who began publishing sf with "The Man I'll Never Be" for Amazing in May 1987. Return to Honor (1989), Assault on Alpha Base (1990) and Strike Eagle (1991) are Technothrillers, but Lifeline (1990) with Kevin J Anderson is of sf interest, and marked both ...
Strange Adventures
UK slim Pulp magazine; two undated issues 1946 and 1947, published by Hamilton & Co, Stafford; edited anonymously. Strange Adventures was an unmemorable juvenile sf magazine. As with its companion, Futuristic Stories, it was written entirely by Norman Firth under pseudonyms. [FHP] links / ...
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 ...