SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 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.
Site updated on 14 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Glasgow 2024 (Worldcon)
Fontenay, Charles L
(1917-2007) US newspaperman and author, born in Brazil and raised in Tennessee from infancy, where he worked as a newspaperman for about half a century. He was a member of the If stable from the publication of his first story, "Disqualified", in September 1954, which he began much later to assemble in the incomplete Here, There and Elsewhen sequence of collected stories; he also wrote three somewhat routine sf novels over the next decade: Twice Upon a Time ...
Mannheim, Karl
Pseudonym of the unidentified UK author (? - ) of two sf Space Operas forming the short Venus series: When the Earth Died (1950) and Vampires of Venus (1950). They are modestly competent but hasty. [JC]
Hyslop, Theo B
(1863-1933) Scots physician, medical superintendent at Bethlem Hospital in London, author of various medical textbooks and of Laputa Revisited by Gulliver Redivivus in 1905 (1905), a Gulliver tale that mildly applies Satire to some turn-of-the-century usual suspects. [JC/SH]
Spotswood, Claire Myers
(1896-1983) Working name of US author Clairene Lenora Allen Myers Owens for her first novel, and only work of sf interest, The Unpredictable Adventure: A Comedy of Woman's Independence (1935), a Utopia told in allegorical language. The protagonist, Tellectina Femina Christian, abandons Smug Harbor in the Land of Err for the Forbidden Kingdom of Nithking, where the two personae signalled by her given names become separate but incomplete individuals. Only ...
Basilisks
The concept of pure information as a Weapon which adversely affects the mind or body is a recurring sf theme. Many authors have given this form of science-fictional spin to a notion grounded in Mythology, where the basilisk is an imaginary creature which like Medusa and her sister Gorgons can kill with a glance [for Face of Glory and Gorgons see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under ...
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 ...