SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Spooks!
Short US film (1953). Columbia Pictures. Directed by Jules White. Written by Felix Adler. Cast includes Steve Calvert, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Shemp Howard, Tom Kennedy, Norma Randall and Philip Van Zandt. 16 minutes. Black and white. / The Three Stooges (at the time, Fine, Moe Howard, and Shemp Howard) are private detectives (see Crime and Punishment) hired to find a missing woman. They disguise themselves as pie salesmen and go from door to ...
Skene, Anthony
Pseudonym of UK author George Norman Philips (1884-1972) used primarily for his Sexton Blake tales featuring a character of his own creation, the albino Antihero M Zenith, or Zenith the Albino, who first appears in "A Duel to the Death" (21 November 1919 Union Jack #837), with many stories to follow, including Monsieur Zenith (1936; vt Monsieur Zenith the Albino 2001), his last appearance being "The Affair of the Bronze ...
Serial Experiments Lain
Japanese animated tv series (1998). Triangle Staff/Pioneer LDC. Producers include Yasuyuki Ueda. Writer: Chiaki J Konaka. Directors include: Ryūtarō Nakamura and Lia Sargent. Voice cast includes Yōko Asada, Shō Hayami and Kaori Shimizu. Thirteen 24-minute episodes. Colour. / Some days after her Suicide, a girl's classmates receive emails from her saying that she now lives in the Wired, an expanded ...
Browne, Gerald A
(1924-2015) US author, mostly of high-gloss thrillers like 11 Harrowhouse (1972), and of two novels of genre interest: the protagonist of Hazard (1973) utilizes Telepathy to uncover an Arab plot against Israel; the eponymous Stone 588 (1986) is a crystal with the power to heal. [JC]
Meredith, Edgar
(? -? ) UK author of a Scientific Romance, Our Stranger: A Kinemato-Romance (1936), in which the Time theories of J W Dunne are used to shape the relationship between the evolving human race, as depicted in the London of 1971, and their mentors, who inhabit a Utopia in 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 ...