SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 5 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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Lewitt, S N
(1954- ) US author; the initial N in her name stands for "Nothing"; she variously signs her works as given as the headword above, and as both Shariann Lewitt and Shariann N Lewitt; pseudonyms include Rick North and Gordon Kendall (see below). Lewitt began publishing work of genre interest with "St Joey the Action" in Perpetual Light (anth 1982) edited by Alan Ryan; after First and Final Rites (1984), a fantasy ...
Wright, Austin Tappan
(1883-1931) US corporation lawyer, academic and author; member of an intensely literary family of which figures of interest include his mother, the novelist Mary Tappan Wright (1851-1916), and his grandson, Tappan King [see also The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. His first publication of genre interest was "1915?" in The Atlantic Monthly for April 1915, which depicts an unnamed (but ...
Slauerhoff, Jan
(1898-1936) Dutch poet and author, who spent much of his adult life as a ship's doctor in exotic climes, and whose two published novels treat China as a symbolic and fantastical creation. Het verboden rijk (November 1931-September 1932 Forum; 1932; trans Paul Vincent as The Forbidden Kingdom, 2012) haunts a contemporary Irish wanderer with the memories and experience of the Portuguese poet Luis de Camoes (1524-1580), retracing Camoes' journey in China with a ...
Starhawk
Pseudonym of US activist and author Miriam Simos (1951- ), perhaps best known for the nonfiction The Spiral Dance (1979), a Neopagan advocacy of a Religion based on the Goddess. The first volume of her Walking to Mercury sequence, comprising The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) and Walking to Mercury (1997), is of strong sf interest. Set in the distant Near Future, its ...
Amateur Science Stories
UK Amateur Magazine published from Leeds, West Yorkshire, by the fan-run SFA (Science Fiction Association) and edited by Douglas W F Mayer. Paper size 8½in x 14in. Three issues only, October 1937 (9pp), December 1937 (16pp) and March 1938 (18pp). / This poorly mimeographed fiction Fanzine is mildly notable for its publication of Arthur ...
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 ...