SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 9 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.
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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 ...
Arreola, Juan José
(1918-2001) Mexican author and academic whose full name was Juan José Arreola Zúñiga. Best known for his fantastic short stories, especially the Kafkaesque "El guardagujas" ["The Switchman"] (7 May 1950 México en la Cultura), he is considered one of Mexico's premier experimental short story authors and one of the masters, alongside Jorge Luis Borges, of the essay-story. Borges also described ...
Sokołowski, Krzysztof
(1957- ) Polish critic, translator and editor, author of the Poland entry in the 1993 edition of this encyclopedia. A graduate of Warsaw University, Sokołowski is well known for his critical pieces on US-UK sf in the magazine Fantastyka. Since its foundation in 1990 until it ceased in 2001 he was editor of Fenix, the first professional science fiction and ...
Watlock, W A
(? -? ) UK author, probably pseudonymous, of The Next 'Ninety-Three; Or, Crown, Commune, and Colony: Told in a Citizen's Diary (1886 chap), a Near Future Political Satire in which the introduction of the Equal Distribution of Property Act of 1893 causes huge disarray, only saved by an Invasion by Australia, spoofing the ...
Jael
(1937-2020) Working name of an American artist who was persistently coy about her full name; however, since it is known that her mother was named Muriel Ashton, and since records show that a Jael Ashton graduated in 1956 from West High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, the state where she grew up, it is reasonable to conclude that Jael Ashton was her original name. After an earlier marriage, she was married to Greg Ruesch until her death. Her activities in the years following high school are ...
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 ...