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Saturday 11 July 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 7 July 2026
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Phoenix 2772
Japanese animated film (1980; vt Space Firebird 2772). Original title Hi no Tori 2772: Ai no Kosumozōn. Tezuka Productions, Toho Company. Based on the Manga by Osamu Tezuka. Directed by Taku Sugiyama. Written by Taku Sugiyama and Osamu Tezuka. Voice cast includes Kazuo Kumakura, Katsue Miwa, Kaneto Shiozawa and Keiko Takeshita. 122 minutes. Colour. / During his early childhood Godo ...
Thing
US letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed on newsprint. Published by Norman H Kietzer. No editor named. One undated issue only, 1980. / This was an attempt by Kietzer of Serial World to enter the field of Monster Movie magazines with a product featuring articles on and photographs from Godzilla (1954), a filmbook of The Wolfman ...
My Science Project
Film (1985). Touchstone/Silver Screen Partners II. Written and directed by Jonathan R Betuel. Cast includes Dennis Hopper, Raphael Sbarge, Fisher Stevens, John Stockwell and Danielle von Zerneck. 94 minutes, cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / One of an epidemic of teen sf movies (Back to the Future, Explorers, Real Genius, Weird Science, etc.), this was ...
Spaceships
The suggestion that people might one day travel to the Moon inside a flying machine was first put forward seriously by John Wilkins in 1638. There had been cosmic voyages prior to that date, and there were to be many more thereafter (see Fantastic Voyages; Space Flight), but few took the mechanics of the journey seriously enough to invest much imaginative effort in ...
Pfeffer, Susan Beth
(1948-2025) US author for children and the Young Adult market, prolifically from 1970, perhaps best known for the nonfantastic The Year Without Michael (1987). Of sf interest are two series. The VCR Time Travel sequence comprises Rewind to Yesterday (1988) and Future Forward (1989), whose young protagonists engage in generally lighthearted Time Travel, as enabled by their mysterious ...
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 ...