SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 16 February 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 16 February 2026
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Message from Space
Japanese film (1978; original title Uchū Kara no Messēji). Toei Company, Tohokushinsha Film Corporation. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku. Written by Kinji Fukasaku, Shotaro Ishinomori, Hiro Matusda and Masahiro Noda. Cast includes Eisei Amamoto, Peggy Lee Brennan, Philip Casnoff, Sonny Chiba, Vic Morrow, Masazumi Okabe, Junkichi Orimoto, Hiroyuki Sanada, Makoto Satō, Isamu Shimizu and Etsuko Shihomi. 105 minutes. Colour. / When the planet of ...
Conesa, Lisa
(1935-1991) Polish-born author, editor, poet and fan, in the UK from a very early age, who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Millionaires" in Macrocosm for December 1971 but thereafter wrote only poems, reviews and criticism. She published the well-produced and highly regarded 1970s Fanzine Zimri (eight issues, 1971-1976), whose contributors included Brian W Aldiss ...
Anders, Charlie Jane
(1969- ) US editor, performance artist and author, her early stories being signed Charles Anders, then Charlie Anders. She began to publish work of genre interest with "Skin Switch" in Maelstrom Speculative Fiction for January 1999 as Charles Anders; her shorter work includes The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model (11 August 2010 Tor.com; 2011 ebook), Six Months, Three Days (June 2011 ...
Finland
Sf in Finland, now over a century old, has been diverse, with few clear-cut lines of development. The earliest story was the serial "Muistelmia matkaltani Ruskealan pappilaan uuden vuoden aikoina vuonna 1983" ["Memoirs of My Trip to the Vicarage of Ruskeala around New Year 1983"] (1883, in the newspaper Aura) by Evald Ferdinand Jahnsson. Apart from a few children's stories, early Finnish sf took the form of future, sometimes socialist, Utopias. The Moon was ...
Borgo Press
Former US publishing house, a Small Press which long maintained a fairly extensive list of works of interest to sf. Its name is a play on "Borgo Pass," the name for Romania's Tihuţa Pass used in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897; rev with cuts 1901). Originally based in California, the company was founded in 1975 by Robert Reginald, as publisher and ...
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 reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...