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.
Site updated on 14 July 2025
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Land of the Lustrous
Japanese animated tv series (2017); original title Houseki no Kuni. Orange. Based on the Manga by Haruko Ichikawa. Directed by Takahiko Kyogoku. Written by Toshiya Oono. Voice cast includes Tomoyo Kurosawa, Jôji Nakata and Chiwa Saitô. Twelve 24-minute episodes. Colour. / On an ocean planet with seven moons, there is only one small landmass on which live 28 immortal humanoid Gems. With their teacher, Kongou-Sensei ...
Glyn, Coralie
(1866-1928) UK author whose work focused on the social problems of working-class women – she herself was a member of the Carr Glyn family, sister of the fourth Baron Wolverton, and related by marriage to Charles Kingsley [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. The Idyll of the Star-Flower (1895) concerns the early-Christian quest of a Norseman for the eponymous flower, which will heal the world if ...
Mason, Eveleen Laura
(1838-1914) US author whose Utopia, Hiero-Salem: The Vision of Peace [for full title see Checklist below] (1889), presents spiritualist doctrines within an sf frame: the eponymous communitarian settlement in Wisconsin is inhabited by the "dualized", human beings who have shed all male or female characteristics (see Feminism; Gender). Mason's later works – most vividly ...
Planeta Bur
Russian film (1962; vt Planet of Storms; vt Storm Planet; vt Cosmonauts on Venus). Leningrad Studio of Popular Science Films. Directed by Pavel Klushantsev. Written by Alexander Kazantsev, Klushantsev. Cast includes Kyunna Ignatova, Gennadi Vernov, Vladimir Yemelyanov and Georgi Zhonov. 85 minutes, cut to 74 minutes. Colour. / Cosmonauts land on Venus, accompanied by a robot that plays dance music (thus ...
Looper
Film (2012). FilmDistrict/TriStar Pictures. Directed by Rian Johnson, starting Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. Written by Johnson. Colour. 118 minutes. / It is 2044 and Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, a paid killer who murders people sent back from the further future (thus eliminating any evidence of the crime). Obviously this Time Travel premise makes no sense but it exists to allow director Johnson to explore the possibility of ...
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 ...