SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 July 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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Cowan, Frank
(1844-1905) US newspaper editor and author whose Revi-Lona: A Romance of Love in a Marvelous Land (1879), is a Parody of the Lost Race novels so popular in the late nineteenth century. It is set, like many of them, in a clement enclave at one of the poles (in this case Antarctica), where a council of matriarchs falls under the narrator's sexual sway (he sleeps with the entire 25-strong governing council). The results are ...
Mathers, Helen
Pseudonym of UK author Ellen Buckingham Mathews Reeves (1850-1920), who gained her greatest success with her first novel, Comin' thro the Rye (1875 3vols) as by H B M, but who remained prolific for many years; of sf interest are The Juggler and the Soul (1896) and The Sin of Hagar (1896), both melodramas involving Hypnosis, experiments in Medicine, and reanimation of the dead. [JC]
Thomas, Leah
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Shards" in Daily Science Fiction for April 2011; Because You'll Never Meet Me (2015), an epistolary Young Adult novel, one of whose protagonists is allergic to electricity, while the other requires a pacemaker to control his cardiomyopathy; the two gradually discover that there is a ...
Beetlestone, Susan
(? - ) UK author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Face Lift" in Interzone for November/December 1988; the Satirical approach to Near Future issues of Identity in this tale has, variously expressed, governed the remainder of her work, through which can also be seen an informed interest in ...
Barren, Charles
(1913-1999) UK teacher and author, best known for historical romances; co-author with R Cox Abel of Trivana I (1966), in which an overpopulated Earth uses the titular Spaceship (powered by an Ion Drive) to establish a Venus colony (see Colonization of Other Worlds). Barren also scripted a sf drama, "The Planet of ...
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 ...