SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 25 February 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 23 February 2026
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Adair, Gilbert
(1944-2011) Scottish literary theorist, critic, translator and author, in France 1968-1980, subsequently in the UK. His fiction has some fantasy interest, including his two Sequels by Other Hands for Young Adult readers, Alice Through the Needle's Eye (1984) and Peter Pan and the Only Children (1987), respectively sequelling Lewis Carroll and James Barrie ...
Bell, Neal
(? - ) US author whose sf novel Gone to Be Snakes Now (1974), set initially in an isolated Keep in a Ruined Earth America, traces events after the Mutant-haunted, Sex-irradiated wilderness beyond the walls is entered. [JC]
Morgan, Helene
(? - ) US author, possibly pseudonymous, of the erotic sf novel (see Sex), Seed of the Beast (1965). [JC]
Erdman, Alan T
(1946- ) US author whose first novel, Maximum Security: The Mojave Project (2006), polemically examines the California penal system in 2032 (see Crime and Punishment), after a 2016 earthquake has caused the dispersal of facilities, and the Supreme Court's judging capital punishment to be unconstitutional has forced other changes. [JC]
Johnson, Alaya Dawn
(1982- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Shard of Glass" in Strange Horizons for February 2005, and most of whose work has been Fantasy: including the Spirit Binders sequence beginning with Racing the Dark (2007), which is set in Polynesia before the whites came, and featuring characters in control of the spirit world; and the Zephyr Hollis sequence ...
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 ...