SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 13 January 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The
Film (1953). Mutual Pictures/Warner Bros. Director Eugène Lourié. Written by Lou Morheim, Fred Freiberger, based on "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (23 June 1951 Saturday Evening Post; vt "The Fog Horn" in The Golden Apples of the Sun, coll 1953) by Ray Bradbury. Cast includes Paul Christian, Cecil Kellaway, Paula Raymond and Kenneth Tobey. 80 ...
Medicine
Medical applications of Technology comprise one of the few areas where the cutting edge of scientific research impinges directly and intimately upon ordinary human life. New medicines are so rapidly brought into everyday use that it is easy to forget how rapid progress has been, and that barely 100 years separates us from the crucial Conceptual Breakthroughs associated with the development of organic chemistry and the ...
Ultrawave
A once fairly common item of sf Terminology, denoting Imaginary Science radio-like Communications operating Faster Than Light. This sf coinage seems to have been first used in Lester del Rey's "Habit" (November 1939 Astounding); it appears in E E Smith's ...
Mattingly, David B
(1956- ) US sf artist who has occasionally worked also under the names David Mattingly, D B Mattingly and Dave Mattingly. He received his formal art training at the Colorado Institute of Art and Pasadena's Art Center College of Design, then began working full time at Walt Disney Studios (see The Walt Disney Company), eventually becoming the head of the matte department there; among the Disney movies of sf interest on which he ...
Olukotun, Deji Bryce
(? - ) US lawyer and author whose first novel, Everyone Comes from Belterra: When America Owned the Amazon (2009) as Deji Olukotun, is a nonfantastic tale about the rubber industry set in Brazil. The first volume of Nigerians in Space sequence comprising Nigerians in Space (2014) and After the Flare (2017) is also essentially nonfantastic, though it revolves around an attempt to persuade expatriate Nigerian ...
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 ...