SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 17 April 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 14 April 2025
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Mister E from Tau Ceti
Animated tv series (1963). A Cayton Inc and Radio and Television Packagers production. Produced by William D Cayton. Written and directed by Fred Ladd. Cast includes Peter Lazer, Ray Owens, and Sam Raskin. 20 five-minute episodes. Black and white, colour. / "2010 AD": an American newsman detects signals from a Spaceship approaching Earth at twice the speed of light from Tau Ceti; its pilot "Mr E" is portrayed as a small ...
By Dawn's Early Light
US made-for-tv film (1990). HBO Original Films. Directed by Jack Sholder. Written by Bruce Gilbert from the novel Trinity's Child (1983) by William Prochnau. Cast includes Powers Boothe, Rebecca De Mornay (as Rebecca DeMornay), James Earl Jones, Martin Landau, Darren McGavin and Rip Torn. 100 minutes. Colour. / This was one of the last nuclear-war films of the Cold War era, and deals with an ...
Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, The
Mexican film (1957); original title La Momia Azteca contra el Robot Humano; vt The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot. Cinematográfica Calderón S.A. Directed by Rafel Portillo. Written by Alfredo Salazar. Cast includes Crox Alvarado, Rosita Arenas, Luis Aceves Castañeda, Ángel Di Stefani and Ramón Gay. 64 minutes. Black and white. / Scientist Dr Eduardo Almada (Gay), joined ...
Fantastic Voyages
The fantastic voyage is one of the oldest literary forms, the first paradigm instances of its use being the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, from the third millennium BCE, and Homer's Odyssey (circa sixth century BCE); it remains one of the basic frameworks for the casting of literary fantasies. Of the prose forms extant before the development of the form of nonfantastic prose fiction that became identified as the novel in the eighteenth century, the ...
Satire
From the earliest days of Proto SF, satire was its prevailing mode, and this inheritance was evident even after sf proper began in the nineteenth century. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines satire as literary work "in which prevailing vices or follies are held up to ridicule". Proto sf is seldom interested in imagining the societies of other worlds or future times for their own sake; most proto sf of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (by, ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...