SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 5 June 2023
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 3 June 2023
Sponsor of the day: Bruce Gillespie
It Came from Beneath the Sea
Film (1955). Clover/Columbia. Produced by Charles H Schneer. Directed by Robert Gordon. Written by George Worthing Yates, Hal Smith, based on a story by Yates. Cast includes Donald Curtis, Faith Domergue and Kenneth Tobey. 77 minutes. Black and white. / In this Monster Movie a giant octopus is affected by atomic radiation – as so often in the genre – and goes on a destructive rampage, attacking San Francisco and demolishing various ...
*batteries not included
Film (1987). Amblin/Universal. Executive Producer Steven Spielberg. Director Matthew Robbins. Written by Brad Bird, Robbins, Brent Maddock, S S Wilson, based on a story by Mick Garris. Cast includes Michael Carmine, Hume Cronyn, Frank McCrae, Elizabeth Pena and Jessica Tandy. 106 minutes. Colour. / Originally intended as an episode of the television series Amazing Stories, this film betrays its small-screen ...
Slough Feg
Also known as "The Lord Weird Slough Feg"; US heavy metal band, named after a character in the 2000 AD comic series Sláine. The group's first three albums – The Lord Weird Slough Feg (1998), Twilight of the Idols (1999) and Down Among the Deadmen (2000) – excavate a vein of Celtic-themed mythic Fantasy; but their fourth release, Traveller (2003) is a concept ...
Blayre, Christopher
Pseudonym of UK lawyer, biologist, violin-maker, translator and author Edward Heron-Allen (1861-1943) whose first publication, Violin-Making as It Was and Is (1884), based on his own practical experience, remains in print. Also under his own name, he wrote The Princess Daphne (1885), a novel of psychic vampirism, and A Fatal Fiddle: The Commonplace Tragedy of a Snob (coll 1890), which includes a story centred on telepathy (see ...
Reisman, Jessica
(1963- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Arcana of Maps" for The Third Alternative #23 in 2000, which became the title story of her first collection, The Arcana of Maps and Other Stories (coll 2019); her sf novel, The Z Radiant (2004), is set in on a planet in a region of space accessible solely through Wormholes, which open only once ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began publishing sf reviews in 1964 and sf proper with "A Man Must Die" in New Worlds for ...