SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 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.
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My Stepmother is an Alien
Film (1988). Weintraub/A Franklin R Levy/Ronald Parker Production/Catalina. Directed by Richard Benjamin. Written by Jericho Weingrod, Herschel Weingrod, Timothy Harris, Jonathan Reynolds. Cast includes Dan Aykroyd, Kim Basinger and Alyson Hannigan. 108 minutes. Colour. / This charmless and leaden-footed Sex comedy tells of an Alien woman (Basinger), fully human in appearance, who comes to Earth to learn the operation of a ...
Jones, Peter
(1951- ) UK artist who, ignoring school careers advice to become "a North Sea Trawlerman", enrolled in London's Saint Martin's School of Art, graduating in 1974 and having his first cover art published that year. His Illustrations have the drama of the sf Pulps, with a lively use of colour and intriguing backgrounds – one of his earliest, for Christopher Stasheff's ...
Mesnay, Henry
(? - ) French author of La Redoutable secret (1948; trans anon as The Formidable Secret 1952), a Lost World tale set in the mountains of Asia, where the manuscript of a survivor of the fall of Atlantis is discovered far Underground. [JC]
Anderson, Kevin J
(1962- ) US technical author and author, married to Rebecca Moesta; he began publishing sf with "Luck of the Draw" in Space and Time (Winter 1982/1983 #63), and gradually became a prolific contributor of short fiction and articles to various sf journals, over 100 items having been published by 1992. His first novel, Resurrection, Inc. (1988; vt ...
Turenne, Raymond
Working name of French diplomat, banker and author Raymond Auzias-Turenne (1861-1940), in Canada from 1890; he also wrote as by Amès Sémiré. Of sf interest is Le dernier mamouth (1904 as Raymond Auzias de Turenne; trans as The Last of the Mammoths 1907), in which the eponymous survivor is hunted down in its despoiled Lost World. [JC]
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 ...