SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 2025
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 7 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Kimball, Ward
(1914-2002) US animator, director and producer, one of Walt Disney's "nine old men" (see The Walt Disney Company). / Kimball, full name Ward Walrath Kimball, was born in Minneapolis. He studied at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts, then joined the Disney studio in 1934 as an inbetweener (drawing intermediate frames between key frames so the animation looks smooth); he became an animator in 1936 and was the Animation Supervisor or Directing ...
Adventures of Captain Marvel
US Serial Film (1941). Republic Pictures. Directed by John English and William Witney. Associate producer: Hiram S Brown Jr. Written by Ronald Davidson, Norman S Hall, Arch B Heath, Joseph Poland and Sol Shor based on the Comics character Captain Marvel created by C C Beck and Bill Parker (both uncredited). Cast includes Frank Coghlan Jr, Nigel De Brulier, Gerald Mohr (voice, uncredited) and ...
Kureishi, Hanif
(1954- ) UK film director, playwright, screenwriter and author whose career began with a theatrical play, Soaking Up the Heat (performed London, 1976), but who came to general notice with a Television play, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985 BBC; 1986). One of his novels is of sf interest: the protagonist of The Body (2004) arranges to have his brain transplanted (see ...
Leonard, George H
(1921-2018) US public health administrator and author who served in World War Two from 1941 to 1945 and began to publish work of genre interest with Sexmax (1969) as by Hughes Cooper, a modestly erotic novel in which love and Sex perturb a Computer-controlled Dystopia. His sf novel under his own name, Alien (1977; vt Alien Quest ...
Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul
Japanese animated film (2020); original title Made in Abyss: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei. Kinema Citrus. Based on the Manga by Akihito Tsukushi. Director: Masayuki Kojima. Writers: Hideyuki Kurata. Voice cast includes Shiori Izawa, Mariya Ise, Minase, Toshiyuki Morikawa and Miyu Tomita. 105 minutes. Colour. / A continuation of the television series Made in Abyss (2017), following 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 ...