SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 8 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.
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Grant, Rob
(1955-2026) UK author, initially best known under the collaborative pseudonym Grant Naylor for his work on the Red Dwarf (1988-current) Television series (which see for discussion). Only one related novel, Grant's solo Backwards (1996), has not been published under this name; as the title suggests, the central sf theme in Backwards is that of ...
Green, Joseph
(1931-2026) US author of sf and technical journalism who also worked for NASA, and who began publishing sf with "The Engineer" in New Worlds for February 1962. An Affair with Genius (coll 1969) assembles some of his better early work. Since 1989 he also published short fiction in Analog, F&SF and other magazines as by Francis Marion Soty. Although many of his 70-plus stories (not all sf) have ...
Simmons, Dan
(1948-2026) US elementary school teacher circa 1971-1987 and author, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The River Styx Runs Upstream" in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine for April 1982, and who was for some time thought of primarily as an author of tales of Horror, some of which – along with sf and Fantasy stories – were assembled ...
Hammond, Aubrey
(1894-1940) UK set designer, art director and illustrator, well known in these capacities; in active service during World War One. His first film as art director, Hyde Park Corner (1935), directed by Sinclair Hill, is Fantasy. Hammond is of importance as an sf illustrator almost solely for one work, his remarkably strong wraparound Art Deco cover for the first English translation of Thea ...
Przekładaniec
Polish tv film (1968; vt Layer Cake; vt Roly Poly; vt Hodge Podge). Telewizja Polska (TVP), Zespol Filmowy "Kamera". Directed by Andrzej Wajda. Written by Stanisław Lem, based on his short story "Czy pan istnieje, Mr. Johns?" (1955 Przekrój; in Dzienniki gwiazdowe, coll 1957; trans Peter Roberts as "Are You There, Mr. Jones?", August 1969 Vision of Tomorrow). ...
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 ...