SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 14 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: Paul Giamatti
Star Trek: Nemesis
Film (2002). Paramount. Directed by Stuart Baird. Written by John Logan; story Rick Berman & Spiner & Logan. Cast includes LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Tom Hardy, Gates McFadden, Dina Meyer, Ron Perlman, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart. 116 minutes. Colour. / A youthful but physically and morally damaged clone (Hardy) of Enterprise commander Picard establishes himself as a warlord on Romulan sibling-world ...
Wernham, Mark
(? - ) UK journalist and author whose first novel, Martin Martin's on the Other Side (2008), is a Satire so gonzo and broad that it approaches slapstick Absurdist SF in its portrayal of the vaguely Near Future Britain, where the action unpacks. The protagonist Jensen Interceptor – hired by the government to track surviving acolytes of the late ...
Pierce, John R
(1910-2002) US scientist, musician and author, father of the sf critic John J Pierce. As scientist he was employed by Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1936 to 1971, becoming Director of Electronics Research 1952-1958 and Research Director of Communications Principles from 1958, working intimately at the forefront of communications research and development; in early 1948 he coined the term "transistor", which had been developed at Bell Labs. Between 1971 and ...
Offutt, Andrew J
(1934-2013) US author who often signed his name andrew j offutt; his first published story was as by Andy Offutt and his first professional sale was as by A J Offutt. Though that first published story, "And Gone Tomorrow" in If for December 1954, was a contest winner, he regarded his professional sf career as beginning with "Blacksword" in Galaxy for December 1959. He soon became a prolific writer in several genres, both under his own name and ...
Miéville, China
(1972- ) UK author most of whose early work can be understood in terms of Dark Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] or horror (see Horror in SF), but who has become a central figure in early twenty-first-century Fantastika. Beginning with his first novel, King Rat (1998), his narratives constantly feed upon ...
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 ...