SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 10 May 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 4 May 2026
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Conway, Gerard F
(1952-2026) US author informally known as Gerry Conway who began his career in Comics, writing some non-fantastic scripts for Marvel Comics, and editing the short-lived 1973 weird fiction magazine The Haunt of Horror and writing for the 1973-1975 anthology Comic Worlds Unknown. He also worked extensively for ...
Hansen, L Taylor
(1897-1976) US anthropologist and author who attended the University of California Los Angeles for graduate work in science; she published numerous sf stories and popular science articles in the Pulp magazines between 1929 and 1949, beginning with "What the Sodium Lines Revealed" in Amazing Stories Quarterly for Winter 1929, and The Undersea Tube (November 1929 Amazing; 2008 ebook), ...
Sawyer, Walter Leon
(1862-1915) US journalist and author, usually for younger readers; the Jack Lorimer series, all as by Winn Standish, focused on sporting feats. Of sf interest is An Outland Journey (1896), in which a young lad finds himself in "Fairyland", which takes the form, strictly (if absurdly), of a rule-bound Utopia. But it is all a dream. [JC]
Conquest of Space
Film (1955). Paramount. Produced by George Pal, directed by Byron Haskin. Written by James O'Hanlon and others including Barré Lyndon (see Alfred Edgar); based remotely on Das Marsprojekt (1952 Weltraumfahrt; 1952; trans Henry J White as The Mars Project 1953) by Wernher von Braun. Cast includes Walter Brooke, ...
Galaxy Quest
Film (1999). DreamWorks Pictures, Gran Via Productions. Directed by Dean Parisot. Written by Robert Gordon and David Howard. Cast includes Tim Allen, Enrico Colantoni, Daryl Mitchell, Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, Tony Shalhoub and Sigourney Weaver. 102 minutes. Colour. / There is no point in Galaxy Quest where it can be forgotten that the film is an affectionate, mildly Satirical Parody of the first ...
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 ...