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Tuesday 11 November 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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Keyes, Noel
Pseudonym of British-born US author and anthologist David Noel Keightley (1932-2017), whose Contact (anth 1963) is a theme Anthology dealing with meetings of humans and Aliens (see First Contact). According to L W Currey, Sam Moskowitz "served as an anonymous collaborator and selected some of the contents". [PN/DRL]
Van Stry, John
(? - ) US author, who also writes as by Jan Stryvant; beginning to publish work of genre interest with "Changes" in Yarf!: The Journal of Applied Anthropomorphics for December 1997. For most of his early career he focused on fantasy series like the long Valens Legacy sequence beginning with Black Friday (2017 ) as by Jan Stryvant [this series and others under this name are not listed in Checklist below]. Van Stry is of sf ...
EVE Online
Videogame (2003). CCP Games (CCP). Designed by Reynir Harðarson. Platforms: Win (2003); Lin, Mac (2007). / EVE Online is perhaps best described as a Massively Multiplayer Online Space Sim (see Massively Multiplayer Online Games). While the game has role-playing elements, including the ability to improve the skills of player characters, it could ...
Kensett, Percy F
(1868-1940) UK author of The Amulet of Tarv: A Romance of the South Downs, 1,000 BC (1925), a Prehistoric SF tale whose present-day protagonists are given access via Time Viewer to the era in question; they are then able to establish Communications with the past. [JC]
Noto, Cosimo
(circa 1871-? ) Italian physician and author, in the US from about 1898 and practicing as a doctor in New Orleans from 1899, alive in 1914; his Utopia, The Ideal City (1903), carries a doctor and his interlocutor from the present-day city to the New Orleans of 1953, which has been transformed on socialist lines deeply influenced by the work of Edward Bellamy. The heart of the book comprises ...
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 ...