SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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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Readercon
An sf Convention held for the most part annually in the greater Boston region of Massachusetts, founded in 1987 by Bob Colby and Eric Van, and (unusually) run by a revolving committee (including for several years both Colby and Van). Readercon has from the beginning maintained a loose association with the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA), but is not organizationally linked with that group, or other regional conventions run by NESFA, like Boskone. ...
Bird in the Head, A
Short US film (1946). Columbia Pictures. Directed by Edward Bernds. Written by Bernds. Cast includes Vernon Dent, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Moe Howard, Frank Lackteen, Art Miles (uncredited) and Robert Williams. 16 minutes. Black and white. / Hired to put wallpaper on the walls of a room in the home of the Mad Scientist Professor Panzer (Dent), the Three Stooges (at the time Fine, Curly Howard, and Moe Howard) do a predictably inept job and are ...
Kenyon, Tim
(? - ) UK author of an sf novel, Ersatz Nation (2002), set in two Parallel Worlds, one our own, and a second, a Dystopian counterpart to ours run by an entity known as Mother Necessity, who must (rather tamely) be overthrown. [JC]
ASFA
Initialism for the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, a nonprofit education association open to all those involved with sf and fantasy art in either a professional or an amateur capacity. ASFA promotes such work and its creators' rights in various ways, most conspicuously by presenting the Chesley Awards (which see), named for Chesley Bonestell and given annually since 1985. / Vincent ...
Flip Flappers
Japanese animated tv series (2016). Studio 3Hz. Directors include Kiyotaka Oshiyama. Writers include Yuniko Ayana and Naoki Hayashi. Voice cast includes Mao Ichimichi, Ai Kayano, Ayaka Ohashi, Minami Takahashi and Kenjirô Tsuda. Thirteen 24-minute episodes. Colour. / In a Near Future Japan, reserved schoolgirl Cocona (Takahashi) meets the enthusiastic Papika (Ichimichi), a member of the agency FlipFlap; accompanied by ...
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 ...