SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 15 February 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 11 February 2025
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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Skywald Publications
US magazine and Comics publisher which existed from 1970 to early 1975, founded by Sol Brodsky (1923-1984), and Israel Waldman. Brodsky was associated with Marvel Comics for the great majority of his career in various capacities. Skywald issued a short-lived series of colour comics which included Westerns, the Horror title The Heap about a swamp monster ...
Bionics
The word "bionics" was coined in 1960 as a contraction of "biological electronics". Both inside and outside sf it has become the preferred term for Technologies which repair or augment the human body with greater sophistication than mere inert prostheses. Bionics is the biological aspect of Cybernetics theory. Sf's traditional term for people with mechanical enhancements was Cyborg, as in the title of ...
Richmond, Fiona
Pseudonym of UK glamour model, actor and author Julia Rosamund Harrison (1945- ), some of whose books, which vacillate between memoir and extravaganza, are of some sf interest, including The Story of I (1978), a Parody of Histoire D 'O (1954; trans anon as The Story of O 1954 France) by "Pauline Réage", in which the "victim" is a man "trapped" in a cult world; From Here to Virginity ...
Natali, Vincenzo
US-born Canadian filmmaker (1969- ) who began his career as a storyboard artist for animation, in which capacity he worked (but was not credited) on Johnny Mnemonic (1995). His feature debut, as co-writer and director, was the Mathematics-based Horror film Cube (1997); he subsequently directed episodes of ...
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 ...