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Thursday 17 April 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.
Site updated on 14 April 2025
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SF Commentary
Australian Fanzine (1969-current) edited, published, and written by Bruce Gillespie, Melbourne, 97 issues to August 2018; some individual issues guest-edited by John Foyster (#10, #19, #27, #32, #34, #38) and Barry Gillam (#16). / US quarto (letter-size); duplicated #1 (January 1969) to #48/49/50 (October 1976); photo-offset #51 (March 1977) to #52 (June 1977); duplicated #53 (April 1978) to ...
Nkweti, Nana
(? - ) Cameroon-born registered nurse, lawyer, academic and author, long in US after much travelling. Her work, which draws exuberantly and learnedly on folklore, sf topoi, Afrofuturism concerns and fabulation in general, takes the form of short stories, many of them assembled as Walking on Cowrie Shells (coll 2021), signalling as a whole a sharp-minded use of the toolkits of ...
Druillet, Philippe
(1944- ) Innovative French artist with an epic imagination and an astringent pen-line style who cofounded with Moebius (Jean Giraud) and others the publishing company Les Humanöides Associés and the imaginative graphic-fiction magazine Métal Hurlant in 1975; much of the contents of the latter have been published in English in the US magazine Heavy Metal. / ...
Binns, Jack
(1884-1959) UK-born ship radio operator, in the US from 1912; famous for staying at his post on 23-24 January 1909 and transmitting the CQD distress call for eighteen hours without stopping as his ship, the Republic, began to sink; in World War One he worked as an instructor in the Canadian Flying Corps, and later (now resident in the US; he was naturalized in April 1923) wrote introductions to the Radio Boys (see Radio Boys) sequence for the ...
Ryan, C J
(? - ) Pseudonymous US author whose Gloria VanDeen Space Opera sequence, featuring the ex-wife of a galactic Emperor (see Galactic Empires) employed as a tough smart high-level interstellar troubleshooter at the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, comprises Dexta (2005) and Glorious Treason (2005). The stories are lively but unambitious; Gloria ...
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 ...