SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 12 April 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 6 April 2026
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Schenck, Hilbert
(1926-2013) US engineer, university lecturer and author who published his first sf story, "Tomorrow's Weather" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for April 1953, long before he became seriously (though briefly) involved in fiction; much of his nonfiction of the 1950s and 1960s dealt lovingly with the ocean and with oceanological research and exploration technologies. His first two novels are both set in the ocean-girt Cape Cod region of New England, ...
Maison en Petits Cubes, La
Japanese short animated film (2008; vt The House of Small Cubes); original title Tsumiki no Ie. Robot Communications. Created and directed by Kunio Katō. Written by Kenya Hirata. 12 minutes. Colour. / An old man lives on the top floor of an otherwise submerged building; over the decades he has added several new floors as the waters continue to very slowly rise – though the floodwaters stretch to the horizon, an infrastructure exists ...
Battlefleet Mars
Board and counter Wargame (1977). Simulations Publications Inc (SPI). Designed by Redmond Simonsen, B E Hessel. / BattleFleet Mars is a convincing simulation of a limited conflict between an Earth-based corporation and the rebellious employees who operate its colonies on Mars and in the asteroid belt, presented as part of a realistic Future History of the inner solar system ...
Photon
US letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema Fanzine. Publisher and editor: Mark Frank. 27 issues, appearing on a highly erratic schedule from 1963 to 1977. / Originally launched as a mature alternative to Famous Monsters of Filmland, this well-remembered fanzine featured various aspects of Horror and sf cinema, including articles on director Tod Browning and ...
Brin, David
(1950- ) US author with advanced degrees in engineering and physics, who began publishing sf with his first novel, Sundiver (1980), which is also the first volume in the ongoing Uplift sequence (see Uplift), for which he remains best known: it continued with Startide Rising (1983; rev 1985) and The Uplift War (1987), the two being assembled as Earthclan (omni 1987); a further ...
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 ...