SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 13 June 2025
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 9 June 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Longyear, Barry B
(1942-2025) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by Frederick ...
Twonky, The
Film (1953). Arch Oboler Productions/United Artists. Directed by Arch Oboler. Written by Oboler, based on "The Twonky" (September 1942 Astounding) by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner). Cast includes Gloria Blondell, Hans Conreid, Billy Lynn, Ed Max and Janet Warren. 72 minutes. Black and white. / After his sanctimonious Five (1951), about survivors of nuclear war, ...
Clyde, Irene
Pseudonym of UK lawyer and author Thomas Baty (1869-1954), in Japan from 1916. Of sf interest is Beatrice the Sixteenth (1909), whose protagonist, Mary Hatherley, travels back through time (see Time Travel) discovers in a Lost World an egalitarian Utopia inhabited by Amazons; Genders are no longer recognized, and the diction in which the story itself is told ...
Butcher, William
(1951- ) US academic and translator, in Hong Kong from 2005; through his career he has focused very heavily on the work of Jules Verne, both as critic and translator. He is a strong and knowledgeable student of that author, and as his Jules Verne inédit: les manuscrits déchiffrés ["The Unpublished Jules Verne: The Manuscripts Deciphered"] (2015) demonstrates, is deeply familiar with the tangled manuscript ...
Kaiju No. 8
Japanese animated tv series (2024; original title Kaijū 8-gō). Production I.G.. Based on the Manga by Naoya Matsumoto. Directed by Shigeyuki Miya and Tomomi Kamiya. Written by Ichirō Ōkouchi. Voice cast includes Fairouz Ai, Masaya Fukunishi, Tesshō Genda, Wataru Katoh, Asami Seto and Hiroyuki Yoshino. Twelve 24-minute episodes. Colour. / As children, friends Kafka Hibino (Fukunishi) and Mina Ashiro ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...