SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 18 February 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 16 February 2026
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Invincible
US animated tv series (2021-current). Amazon Studios, Image Comics, Skybound Entertainment. Based on the Comic book by Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley. Directed by Jeff Allen, Paul Furminger and Robert Valley. Written by Chris Black, Curtis Gwinn, Robert Kirkman, Christine Lavaf, Simon Racioppa and Ryan Ridley. Voice cast includes Gillian Jacobs, Sandra Oh, Zachary Quinto, Kevin Michael Richardson, J. K. Simmons and Steven Yeun. Eight episodes of ...
X-Ray Spex
UK punk act, founded 1976 and led by vocalist and songwriter Poly Styrene (Marianne Joan Elliott-Said) (1957-2011); the other members were guitarist Jak Airport (Jack Stafford) (circa 1955-2004), bassist Paul Dean, drummer Paul "B. P." Hurding and saxophonist Lora Logic (Susan Whitby) (1960- ), the last leaving after the first single, to be replaced by Steve "Rudi" Thompson. / That first single was "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!" (1977), opening demurely with ...
Pratt, Fletcher
(1897-1956) US author and historian who began his career as an author and translator for Hugo Gernsback's Wonder Stories and its companions in the early 1930s; his first published story was "The Octopus Cycle" for Amazing in 1928 as with Irvin Lester (a Pratt pseudonym). While doing translations of German sf novels Pratt evolved what became a renowned method of extracting payment from the ...
N3F
Short name for the National Fantasy Fan Federation, formed in the USA in 1941; this was the brain-child of Damon Knight, who called for it in a Fanzine article titled "Unite – or Fie!" (October 1940 Fanfare ed Art Widner). After a succession of short-lived and factional US fan associations in the 1930s, the N3F proved a stable and enduring national organization. However, despite its long existence, it has maintained a ...
Irving, Washington
(1783-1859) The father of the US short story and one of the first US professional authors, Irving is an important link in the transfer of the stories of German Romanticism to American soil. Although he studied as a lawyer and briefly pursued that career, his heart was always in writing, and he began publishing essays as early as 1802 in the New York Morning Chronicle, the first of his numerous pseudonyms being Jonathan Oldstyle. He soon produced a number of humorous satirical essays, and ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...