SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 15 May 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 11 May 2026
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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
Barr, Densil Neve
Pseudonym of UK author Douglas Norton Buttrey (1918-1994), whose sf novel, The Man with Only One Head (1955), develops the theme of novels like Pat Frank's Mr Adam (1946): only one man (his name is Adams) is left fertile; and the subsequent moralistic World Federation set up to deal with the crisis is riddled with dissension. The effect is of offhand Satire rather than simple incompetence. [JC]
Hejja, Attila
(1955-2007) American artist, born in Hungary, who moved to the United States with his family at the age of two; his year of birth has also been listed as 1954. After studying under artist Harold Stevenson, Hejja launched a career as an artist and art instructor, founding the Stevenson Academy of Fine Arts to teach students in his home town of Oyster Bay, New York. His various assignments included work for NASA, the United States Air Force, and the United Nations; several covers for ...
Pyle, Nathan W
(1982- ) US television production designer, cartoonist and author best known for his popular webcomic Strange Planet, launched in February 2019 and set in a world of typically blue, hairless, Alien (though Pyle avoids this term) humanoids shaped rather like the traditional Alien Greys of ufological tradition (see UFOs). These beings constantly discuss or enact human quirks and human situations with the kind of ...
Cowley, Stewart
(1947- ) UK author who has also written as by Steven Caldwell and The Reverend Hubert Venables, most but not all of his work being spoof compilations. The first of these, the Terran Trade Authority Handbook beginning with the heavily illustrated Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD (coll 1978), comprises a series of "nonfiction" guides to the Space Opera-inflected Near Future, extending into more ...
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 ...