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Saturday 17 October 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 12 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Monsarrat, Nicholas
(1910-1979), UK soldier, in active service 1940-1946, and author; his surname was misspelled on his birth certificate as "Montserrat", causing some later confusion; in Canada as a British information officer from 1953 to 1956, and intermittently after that date. He was best known for his novel, The Cruel Sea (1951), which became immensely popular. The first of the four volumes of his Signs of the Times series, The Time Before This (1962), which is sf, tells of ...
Friedrich, Caspar David
(1774-1840) German painter of interest within the framework of this encyclopedia for his Romantic luminously Early Romantic horizon-governed landscapes, visions very frequently the focus of the outward gaze of a Rückenfigur [or "back-figure"], a man (usually) seen with his back to the viewer. The Rückenfigur is found throughout the history of the visual arts in the West, but was most conspicuously utilized by Friedrich, in seascapes like "The Wanderer above the Sea of ...
Sanderson, Brandon
(1975- ) US author, of considerable significance for his Heroic Fantasies [for this term and for Robert Jordan see also The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], coming to wide notice with his continuations of Jordan's Wheel of Time sequence and his own Mistborn sequence [neither listed below]. Of sf interest is the ...
Leviathan
Film (1989). Gordon Co./Filmauro. Directed by George P Cosmatos. Written by David Peoples and Jeb Stuart, based on a story by Peoples. Cast includes Richard Crenna, Amanda Pays and Peter Weller. 98 minutes. Colour. / One of several undersea-Alien movies of the period, Leviathan most resembles (and improves on) Deepstar Six (1988), especially in the near-identical finale. In this efficiently scary but routine ...
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 ...