SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 April 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 6 April 2026
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Sleeper
Film (1973). Rollins-Joffe Productions/United Artists. Directed by Woody Allen. Written by Allen, Marshall Brickman. Cast includes Allen, John Beck, Mary Gregory, Diane Keaton and Don Keefer. 88 minutes. Colour. / The plot device of having a man from the present suddenly finding himself in the future (this time through Cryonics) is nearly always used to comment on contemporary society rather than to speculate about the future (see ...
Wondrous Web Worlds
US Anthology series published annually from 2001 to the present and edited by J Alan Erwine. The first two volumes were published by Pro Mart Publishing, Carmichael, California, but all subsequent volumes have been published by Sam's Dot Publishing, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The anthology selects the stories and poems voted by readers as the best in Sam's Dot's Online Magazines: The ...
Du Bois, W E B
(1868-1963) US sociologist, historian, journalist and author; active from the early 1890s, the first African-American to gain a doctorate from Harvard University (in 1895); a co-founder in 1909 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a central figure for many decades in campaigns for full civil rights. His two best known books, The Souls of Black Folk (coll 1903) and Black Reconstruction in America (1935), remain seminal ...
Dagnol, Jules N
Pseudonym of US author Franklin Coasten Langdon (1913-1980), who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Man Who Could Smell Land" in Mast Magazine for October 1947. His sf novel for Robert Hale Limited, The Sandoval Transmissions (1980), is a routine adventure. [SH/JC] see also: Robert Hale Limited. /
Davies, Murray
(1947- ) Welsh journalist and author whose sf novel, Collaborator (2003), is a Hitler Wins Alternate History novel set in Britain in 1940 and later, after a successful Nazi Invasion; Winston Churchill has formed a government-in-exile in Canada, while in England the Duke of Windsor has agreed to become Regent. The ...
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 ...