SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 12 April 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 April 2026
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Ponson du Terrail, Pierre-Alexis
(1829-1871) French author, mostly of popular fiction, best known for the character Rocambole, an Antihero who prefigures many similar adventurers who begin their careers as criminals and end up working, usually in secret, to defend society, a list which includes Maurice LeBlanc's Arsène Lupin, Doc Savage, Leslie Charteris's The Saint, and others; ...
F.P.1 Doesn't Answer
Film (1932; vt Secrets of F.P.1 UK; vt Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay Australia). UFA. Technical credits as for F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht, but starring Conrad Veidt, Jill Esmond and Leslie Fenton. 90 minutes. Black and white. / This is the shorter English-language version of the German film, and was shot at the same time. The acting is better than in the German version. [PN] links / ...
Nott, Kathleen
(1905-1999) UK poet, author and academic, perhaps best known for The Emperor's Clothes (1953), in which she mounted articulate and scathing attacks on the religious pretensions of such writers as T S Eliot (1888-1965) and C S Lewis. Her second novel, The Dry Deluge (1947), which is a Scientific Romance, describes the founding of an Underground ...
Sheng Keyi
(1973- ) Chinese author who came to writing as a mature student after late teens and twenties spent in a variety of professions. Her stories frequently dwell on the formative event of her teenage years – the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989, which she observed first through the prism of state media, and only later came to appreciate as a moment of deeper resonance. / A strong thread of Feminism runs ...
Katō Naoyuki
(1952- ) Japanese artist whose name is sometimes romanized as Naoyuki Katoh; of interest largely for book covers and internal Illustration. He has exerted a strong influence on sf's self-perception in Japan, both within prose fiction and in the related fields of Anime and Manga. Katō became active in fandom while still a student at the Chiyoda Design ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...