SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 20 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.
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Zindell, David
(1952- ) US author with a degree in mathematics who began publishing sf with "The Dreamer's Sleep" in Fantasy Book for December 1984. His career properly began, however, when he won the Writers of the Future Contest with "Shanidar" (in L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, anth 1985, ed Algis Budrys), which was modified into the first ...
Lundgren, Ray
(? - ) American book designer, sometimes credited as a cover artist. There is little biographical information available, as Lundgren keeps a low profile and makes little effort to promote himself, but he is now working in New York City as Senior Art Director for the Penguin Group. While employed in that capacity, Lundgren has been solely responsible for the covers of a number of books officially published under the Roc/ ...
Toxic Avenger, The
Film (1984). HCH/Troma/Palan. Directed by Michael Herz, Samuel Weil. Written by Joe Ritter, based on a story by Lloyd Kaufman. Cast includes Mitchell Cohen, Andree Maranda and Mark Torgl. 100 minutes, cut to 79 minutes. Colour. / After a cruel practical joke is played on him, a teenage nerd falls into a barrel of toxic waste in Tromaville, New Jersey, "Toxic Waste Capital of America". He mutates (see Mutants) into the low-budget ...
Addison, Joseph
(? - ) Scottish-born author resident in Canada whose only novel, Tesseract (1988), perhaps over-complexly explores various dimensions in Time and space, the eponymous AI serving to help the protagonist of the tale decide which Alternate World available to him will offer a chance for Homo sapiens (plus another race) to avoid mortal ...
Clarke, I F
(1918-2009) UK Intelligence officer and code-cracker during World War Two, Professor of English (from 1964) at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and author. His first major publication was the Bibliography ...
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 ...