SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 August 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 3 August 2026
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Decima Vittima, La
Film (1965; vt The Tenth Victim). Champion/Concordia. Directed by Elio Petri. Written by Petri, Ennio Flaiano, Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvione, based on "Seventh Victim" (April 1953 Galaxy) by Robert Sheckley. Cast includes Ursula Andress, Elsa Martinelli, Marcello Mastroianni and Massimo Serato. 92 minutes. Colour. / This French-Italian coproduction is based loosely on Sheckley's story about a future world where, ...
Barlowe, Wayne Douglas
(1958- ) US illustrator whose successful Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (graph 1979; rev vt Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature 1987), in collaboration with Ian Summers and the uncredited Beth Meacham (who wrote the text), was published when he was twenty-one, only two years after he had made his first sale, a cover for ...
Ville d'Avray, Arthur Armand
(1844-1907) French soldier, naturalist and author whose Voyage dans la Lune avant 1900 ["Voyage to the Moon around 1900"] (graph 1892) is a visual narrative, illustrated and captioned by Ville d'Avary, and apparently intended for children. Its protagonists fly to the Moon in a Balloon, where they confront Monsters; they are then transported to Saturn (see ...
Tokusatsu
Tokusatsu is a contraction of the Japanese term tokushu satsuei ["special photography"] and is the term for special effects used in live action film and Television. It is mainly associated with those sf, Fantasy and Horror productions that are dominated by special effects; thus there are many works in those genres not classifiable as Tokusatsu. / Strictly speaking, ...
Rice, Anne
Working name of US author Howard Allen Frances O'Brien Rice (1941-2021), mother of Christopher Rice; her career as a prominent and esteemed producer of fantasy and horror fiction began with the first volume of the Vampire Chronicles sequence, Interview with the Vampire (1976), filmed as Interview with the Vampire (1994) directed by Neil Jordan, whose depiction of ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book ...