SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 15 August 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 10 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Myerson, Julie
(1960- ) UK journalist and author whose novels, beginning with Sleepwalking (1994), are often infiltrated by supernatural elements, sometimes as in this case family ghosts. The protagonist of The Story of You (2006) is haunted by what may be the ghost of a man she broke up with decades ago; the Young Adult Out of Breath (2008) tests the growth trajectory of a young woman through her encounters with ...
deFord, Miriam Allen
(1888-1975) US author, editor and feminist, who was active as a journalist and editor from 1912; married to the distinguished nonfiction author Maynard Shipley (1872-1934) from 1921; she worked as a researcher for Charles Fort between 1922 and his death in 1932; she was the San Francisco correspondent for the socialist Federated Press from 1921 to 1956, and a contributing editor to The Humanist. For the educational publisher Haldeman-Julius she wrote ...
Munsey's Magazine
US magazine published by Frank A Munsey and edited initially by John Kendrick Bangs for only six months and then by Richard H Titherington. It began on 2 February 1889 as Munsey's Weekly, but became a monthly as Munsey's Magazine from October 1891-October 1929, when it merged with Argosy All-Story Weekly (see The Argosy) to form two magazines, ...
Politics
Most of the works which we can characterize with hindsight as Proto SF are political fantasies. The earnest and constructive aspect of this endeavour is generally displayed in Utopias, the mocking and corrosive aspect in Satires. The desire to make political statements has continued to be the main motive force in works of sf by Mainstream Writers, although modern ...
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 ...