SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 10 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Quark [tv]
US tv series (1977-1978). Columbia Picture Television for NBC-TV. Created by Buck Henry. Produced by Bruce Johnson. Directors included Hy Averback, Bruce Bilson, Peter H Hunt. Writers included Henry, Bruce Kane, Jonathan Kaufer, Robert Keats. Cast includes Cyb Barnstable, Patricia Barnstable, Richard Benjamin, Alan Caillou, Douglas Fowley (pilot only), Conrad Janis, Richard Kelton, Bobby Porter and Tim Thomerson. One 45-minute pilot episode plus eight 30-minute episodes. Colour. / In ...
Barlow, Steve
(? - ) Pseudonym of Steve Lowe, UK author of two Star Wars parodies – Star Bores (1999) and Star Bores: The Prequel (2004 dos) – both with Steve Skidmore. Barlow and Skidmore have collaborated on very many books and scripts for child and Young Adult readers. The Outernet sequence involves Cyberspace derring-do in the galactic ...
Browne, Howard
(1908-1999) US author and editor who worked 1942-1947 for Ziff-Davis where, among other responsibilities, he was managing editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, then under Raymond A Palmer's editorship. He contributed stories to the magazines, two serials about the Tarzan-like prehistoric adventurer Tharn being ...
Meyrink, Gustav
Initially the pseudonym of Austrian author Gustav Meyer (1868-1932), resident in Prague from early adulthood until his move to Bavaria in 1906; he took the name legally in 1917. His later portrayals of Prague – clearly influenced by his translation of the works of Charles Dickens (1909-1914 16vols) – transform the City into a hauntingly garish Urban Fantasy [for discussion of this term, as used in the 1990s to ...
Edric, Robert
Pseudonym of UK author Gary Edric Armitage (1956- ), who began his career as G E Armitage with a nonfantastic novel, A Season of Peace (1985), continuing for two decades during which at least fifteen more novels, all but the first as Robert Edric, were released. They are all nonfantastic, though The Broken Lands (1992), about the fatal Arctic expedition headed by Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), pushes to the edge of ...
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 ...