SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 25 September 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 18 September 2023
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Stacy, Jan
(1948-1989) US author of Military SF novels, including the first four volumes of the Doomsday Warrior sequence in collaboration with Ryder Syvertsen under the joint pseudonym Ryder Stacy; Syvertsen continued the series solo (see his entry for titles). Their only non-series collaboration appeared under their real names: The Great Book of Movie Monsters (1983). Writing as John Sievert, they began the ...
Garforth, John
(? - ) UK author whose sf debut was "Lack of Experience" (September 1963 New Worlds). His relevant work at novel length comprises several Ties to Television series of sf-flavoured counter-espionage: four for The Avengers (1961-1969), beginning with The Floating Game (1967), and a singleton for The ...
Hitchcock, Alfred
(1899-1980) UK-born Cinema director and producer whose career began in the silent-movie era in 1920 and who achieved global fame as the "Master of Suspense" – dramatic tension achieved through innovative framing and editing, with such trademark devices as camera movements designed to lure viewers into complicity with the viewpoint of the lens. His first successful films were thrillers made in Britain, notably The 39 Steps (1935), based on John ...
Shaver, Richard S
(1907-1975) US author, author of some sf stories (some under the House Name Paul Lohrman) but now remembered almost exclusively for his hoax-like sequence of Shaver Mystery stories, presented as based on fact, published in Raymond A Palmer's Amazing Stories 1945-1947, beginning with "I Remember Lemuria" in March 1945 (see ...
Dekobra, Maurice
Pseudonym of French author Ernest-Maurice Tessier (1885-1973), most famous for his thriller, La Madone des sleepings (1925; trans Neal Wainwright as The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars 1927); of his sf, which forms a small part of his large output, Météore 101 ([date not established]; trans Metcalfe Wood as Death Requests the Pleasure 1940) depicts Near Future chaos as Meteor 101 approaches Earth. ...
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 ...