SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 23 May 2022
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 23 May 2022
Sponsor of the day: Li Zhaoxin
Ellis, Havelock
(1859-1939) UK author, known as a Feminist, a socialist, and as an unprecedentedly frank (and learned) student of the sexual nature of our species (see Sex), most famously through Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897-1910 6vols), which argues that our sexual natures are essentially innate, including homosexuality. He was a controversial figure for most of his life, though The Dance of Life (1923) was widely read for its affirmative take on the world. Of sf interest is The Nineteenth Century: ...
Gordon, Stuart [2]
(1947-2020) US screenwriter and director whose first film, Re-Animator (1985), fully established the cheerfully gonzo transgressiveness of his treatment of horror in this and other Splatter Movies. The film is taken from H P Lovecraft's Herbert West – Reanimator (February-July 1922 Home Brew as "Grewsome Tales"; vt March 1942-November 1943 Weird Tales; 1977 chap), but the black-humour extremes to which violence is taken, as well as a clear linking of violence and deeply repressed Sex, ...
Diary of Tortov Roddle, The
Japanese animated film series (2003); original title Aru tabibito no nikki. Robot Communications. Created, written and directed by Kunio Kato. Nine 2-6 minute episodes (including three OVAs). Colour. / Tortov Roddle is a lanky young man in top hat, scarf and black coat: his diary records "One day I travelled to the northern plains"; he does so riding a pig whose elongated legs recall Salvador Dalí's Los Elefantes (1948). He witnesses many odd sights: pterodactyls flying overhead; ...
Glavinic, Thomas
(1972- ) Austrian author whose novels range widely in subject matter and treatment, and whose fifth book-length fiction, Die Arbeit der Nacht (2006; trans John Brownjohn as Night Work 2008), is a Last Man tale set initially in Vienna after an inexplicable Disaster has stripped the City – and it turns out the world – of all life, except for the narrator. Haunted by hints that he is not in fact alone – though the intruder is in fact his nocturnal Double ...
Sunless Sea
Videogame (2014). Failbetter Games. Designed by Alexis Kennedy. Platforms: PC. / Expanding the world first seen in Fallen London (2009), Sunless Sea takes the player away from the smoke of Fallen London in order to sail and explore the mysterious Unterzee that surrounds it. The game is considerably different from the original, changing the genre of the game and expanding the compact, narratively dense world created in Fallen London. / The sunless "Unterzee" of the game moves the player ...
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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. Criticized at first for its failure to annotate its findings – so that, for instance, pseudonyms used for sf could not be ...