SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 15 August 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 10 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Monsters [film]
Film (2010). Vertigo Films. Written and directed by Gareth Edwards. Cast includes Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy. 94 minutes. Colour. / A returning probe carrying samples from the geothermal oceans of Europa (see Jupiter) has crashed in central America, which is now infested with giant cephalopods in an international quarantine zone. Cynical photojournalist McNairy is reluctantly charged with delivering his boss's daughter (Able) to safety in the US before ...
Gunn, Eileen
(1945- ) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "What Are Friends For?" in Amazing for November 1978, though most of her work of interest dates from at least a decade later; the work assembled in Stable Strategies and Others (coll 2004) is mostly contemporary with or later than "Stable Strategies for Middle Management" (June 1988 Asimov's), while ...
Almond, David
(1951- ) UK author, much of his work being nonfantastic, though illuminated by hints that the seemingly ordinary world cannot be fully understood in mundane terms; most of his early work was written for a Young Adult readership; some later titles have been released in both young adult and adult formats. His first stories were assembled as Sleepless Nights (coll 1985) and A Kind of Heaven (coll 1997); his first ...
Wood, George
(1799-1870) US government official in the Treasury Department and author; his Peter Schlemihl in America (1848) anonymous is derived from Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte ["Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story"] (1814; trans J Bowring as Peter Schlemihl 1824) by Adalbert Von Chamisso (1781-1838), a supernatural fantasy whose protagonist, having sold his shadow to the Devil, wanders the world in search of wisdom and knowledge, aided in his travels 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 ...