SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 12 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
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Hauru no Ugoku Shiro
Japanese animated film (2004; vt Howl's Moving Castle). Studio Ghibli. Based on the novel Howl's Moving Castle (1986) by Diana Wynne Jones. Directed and written by Hayao Miyazaki. Voice cast includes Chieko Baisho, Tatsuya Gashuin, Ryūnosuke Kamiki, Takuya Kimura and Akihiro Miwa. 119 minutes. Colour. / When staid young hatmaker Sophie (Baisho) meets the ...
Science Fantasy Yearbook
One of the many reprint Digest-size magazines from Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing Co, using stories from old issues of Amazing and Fantastic Adventures, including Theodore Sturgeon's The Dreaming Jewels (February 1950 Fantastic Adventures; exp 1950; vt ...
Tit-Bits Science-Fiction Library
A series of nineteen generally undistinguished sf paperback chapbooks published by C Arthur Pearson of London (see Pearson's Weekly) monthly from September 1953 to March 1955. All volumes ran to 64pp, were priced at 9d (nine old UK pence) and had cover paintings in vigorous Pulp mode by Ron Turner. A bibliographical oddity is that the books lack title or copyright pages; the series affiliation appears ...
Walt Disney Company, The
Popularly referred to as Disney, this media conglomerate has been known by the above name since 1986. Its first iteration was the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio (1923-1926), named after its founders Walt Disney (1901-1966) and Roy O Disney (1893-1971); then The Walt Disney Studio (1926-1929); followed by Walt Disney Productions (1929-1986). Roy Disney's input to the various Disney companies involved business rather than creative matters; he was CEO until 1971 and President (the post previously ...
Boston, Bruce
(1943-2024) US poet (see Poetry) and prose author whose early work tended to the surreal, but who began – with stories like "Break" for New Worlds 7 (anth 1974) edited by Hilary Bailey and Charles Platt – to invoke fantasy and sf themes. His early poetry – much of it not genre at all, and almost all of it couched in a classically lucid voice – can most easily be ...
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 ...