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
Emshwiller, Peter R
(1959- ) US actor, illustrator and author, son of Carol Emshwiller and Ed Emshwiller, who has also worked as Stoney Emshwiller; of sf interest is his Near Future series of noir tales – The Host (1991) and Short Blade (1992) – set in a New York directly extrapolated (seemingly) from the ...
Ghosh, Amitav
(1956- ) Indian author now resident in the US, whose sf novel, The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery (1992), won the Arthur C Clarke Award. Within a thriller frame, it provides a searching exploration of culture, ethics, and the possibilities of Genetics, plus a fantasticated portrait of Ronald Ross, whose 1902 ...
Forward, Robert L
(1932-2002) US physicist and author, senior scientist at Hughes Research Laboratories and one of the most devoted Hard-SF authors of the 1980s; married to Martha Dodson Forward, father of Julie Forward Fuller (with whom he has collaborated on sf) and supernatural fiction author Robert Dodson Forward (1958- ). He began publishing sf with "The Singing Diamond" in Omni for ...
Karl, Jean E
(1927-2000) US editor and author, important in the former capacity for her founding of Atheneum Children's Books, where she edited Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea sequence and Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, and many other titles. Her nonfiction titles – such as From Childhood to Childhood: Children's Books and Their Creators (John Day Co, 1970) – were usually based on her experiences ...
Aru Kararu no Isan
Japanese Original Video Animation (1993; vt Legacy of Aru Kararu; vt The Inheritance of Aru Kararu; vt Al Caral no Isan). Animate Film. Based on Al Kalal no Isan ["The Inheritance of Al Kalal"] (1985 Ryū; graph 1990) by Katsumi Michihara. Directed by Kôichi Ishiguro. Written by Mayori Sekijima. Voice cast includes Yuzuru Fujimoto, Aya Hisakawa, Hideyuki Hori, Ai Orikasa and Hideyuki Tanaka. 75 ...
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 ...