SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 7 October 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 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Yano Tetsu
Pseudonym of Osamu Sakata (1923-2004), an author and translator instrumental in the dissemination of Anglophone sf in Japan. Graduating in Law from Chuō University in 1943, he was drafted into the Japanese armed forces. In post-war Japan, he famously scavenged the trash dumps of US Occupation bases, discovering in the process a lifelong love of the garish sf Magazines he found there. / In 1953 he was the first Japanese fan to make ...
Dante 01
Film (2008). Eskwad/Wild Bunch. Directed by Marc Caro. Written by Caro and Pierre Bordage. Cast includes Simona Maicanescu, Dominique Pinon and Lambert Wilson. 82 minutes. Colour. / French director Caro's solo debut shares a premise with Alien Resurrection (1997), directed by his frequent collaborator Jean-Pierre Jenuet: a group of Scientists are carrying out dubious and dangerous research on a ...
Mayo, The Earl of
Working name of Irish politician and author, Dermot Robert Wyndham Bourke (1851-1927), 7th Earl of Mayo, whose Future War novel, The War Cruise of the "Aries" (1894), pits Britain against France, the battle turning on the use of a new Invention, a kind of mobile battering ram the size of a ship. [JC]
Guardians of the Galaxy
Film (2014). Marvel Studios. Directed by James Gunn. Written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman. Cast includes Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper (voice), Vin Diesel (voice and some motion capture), Karen Gillan, Lee Pace, Chris Pratt, Michael Rooker and Zoe Saldana. 121 minutes. Colour, 3D (converted). / Five outlaws chasing the bounty on a cosmic McGuffin are cheated of the prize and thrown into a space Prison together; when the orb they ...
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 ...