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.
Site updated on 14 July 2026
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Cloning of Joanna May, The
UK tv miniseries (1991). Granada/ITV. Produced by Gub Neal. Directed by Philip Saville. Written by Ted Whitehead from The Cloning of Joanna May (1989) by Fay Weldon. Cast includes Helen Adie, Brian Cox, Laura Eddy, Emma Hardy, Patricia Hodge, Siri Neal (Bethany) and Billie Whitelaw (Mavis). 180 minutes. Colour. / Obsessive business tycoon Carl May (Cox) effectively Clones his wife Joanna (Hodge), then repudiates ...
Squid Girl
Japanese animated tv series (2010-2014). Original title Shinryaku! Ika Musume. Based on the Manga by Masahiro Anbe. Diomedéa. Written by Michiko Yokote. Directed by Tsutomu Mizushima and Yasutaka Yamamoto. Voice cast includes Ayumi Fujimura, Hisako Kanemoto, Hitomi Nabatame, Miki Ōtani and Rie Tanaka. 24 24-minute episodes and five OVAs. Colour. / The routine of a beachfront cafe, the Lemon Beach House, is ...
Sand, George
Pseudonym of French author Amantine Lucille Aurore Dupin (1804-1876), a figure of cultural importance in France from the 1830s until her death; she published widely, an oeuvre which included about forty novels alone. Of sf interest is Laura: Voyage dans le cristal (1864; trans Pauline Pearson-Stamps as Journey Within the Crystal 1992; new trans Sue Dyson as Laura: Journey into the Crystal 2004). This is both an anticipation of ...
Man with Two Brains, The
Film (1983). Aspen Film Society. Directed by Carl Reiner. Written by Reiner, Steve Martin, George Gipe. Cast includes Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner and David Warner. 93 minutes, cut to 86 minutes. Colour. / Pastiche is the essence of most Steve Martin comedies; his self-indulgent acting style becomes rapidly tiresome when his performances are not focused by a good director, but Reiner is good, and this is a genuinely funny film spoofing the ...
O'Neil, Vincent
(? - ) US author, active from around 2005, who has written detective fiction and horror under his own name. As Henry V O'Neil he is of sf interest for his Military SF series, the Sim War sequence beginning with Glory Main (2012), which begins in fairly typical fashion with its protagonist soldier forced into an extreme situation in a Space Opera frame, as the war with ...
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 ...