SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 13 July 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.
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Algernon
Norwegian Fanzine; 40 issues published 1974-1998 by the Oslo Students' SF Club, Aniara – the name taken from Harry Martinson's poem Aniara (1956) – whose founding editor was Øystein Sørensen. Published 3-4 times a year until 1979; more irregular during the 1980s; guest editors 1989-1991, then edited regularly by Cirstyn Bech-Yagher 1991-1998. / Regarded as the ...
Clarke, J Brian
(1928-2022) UK-born Canadian author, a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, who began publishing sf with "Artifact" in Analog for June 1969. The nine stories in the Expediter sequence, beginning with "The Expediter" (February 1984 Analog), have been more influential, and culminate in The Expediter (fixup 1990), which assimilates some of the earlier material in an overview presentation of an exceedingly ...
Pocket Comics
US Comic 1941-1942. Alfred Harvey. Four issues. Artists include Al Avison, Louis Cazeneuve, Al Gabriele, Bob Powell and Pierce Rice. Scriptwriters include Eando Binder, Alfred Harvey, Art Helfant and Major Ralston. Each issue was 100 pages, digest sized; they carried eight long strips, as well as a few 1-2 page humorous ones, plus a couple of text stories. / The comic's most overtly sf strip was The Red Blazer. Having ...
Skoggard, Bruno
(1921-1978) Swedish-born pilot, advertising executive and author, in USA from childhood, though his World War Two military service was with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Of sf interest is The Pentagon Tapes (1976), a Near Future thriller set in Washington. [JC]
Booth, Pat
(1929-2018) New Zealand newspaper journalist (chiefly with The Auckland Star), local-area politician and author, one of whose sixteen books is sf: Long Night Among the Stars (1961) sensitively depicts the human interactions of the crew of a Spaceship in the Near Future. This author should not be confused with the female Pat Booth (1943-2009) who wrote All for Love (1993), a medical fantasy ...
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 ...