SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 16 September 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 14 September 2026
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Godfrey, Hollis
(1874-1936) US engineer, academic and author in whose sf novel, The Man Who Ended War (1908), the inventor of a radioactive metal-disintegrating Ray (an early nuclear weapon of sorts, though not the first in world literature; see Robert Cromie) threatens to destroy the world's warships from a secret location, one by one, if the great powers refuse to disarm. They initially resist and he carries out his threat, though the ...
Colebatch, Hal
(1945-2019) Australian lawyer, the third son of the Australian politician Sir Hal Colebatch (1872-1953), and author of much nonfiction written from a conservative point of view. His career as a fiction writer was long restricted to the contribution of various Ties to Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars Shared World enterprise, beginning with "The Colonels' Tiger" in ...
Prometheus
Film (2012). Twentieth Century Fox in association with Dune Entertainment presents a Scott Free/Brandywine production. Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof. Cast includes Idris Elba, Michael Fassbender, Logan Marshall-Green, Guy Pearce, Noomi Rapace, Ralph Spall and Charlize Theron. 124 minutes. Colour. / In 2093, the ship Prometheus includes archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Charlie Holloway ...
Flying Saucer, The
Film (1950). Colonial Productions, Inc/Film Classics, Inc. Produced and directed by Mikel Conrad. Written by Howard Irving Young from a story by Conrad. Cast includes Mikel Conrad, Roy Engel, Pat Garrison, Denver Pyle and Hantz von Teuffen. 69 minutes. Black and white. / After numerous reports of flying saucers (see UFOs) from what was then the US Alaskan Territory, US intelligence recruits playboy Mike Trent (Conrad) to investigate; he is accompanied by ...
Information Theory
Claude E Shannon (1916-2001), American mathematician and computer scientist, published work on encoding Communications and articulated fundamental theoretical principles from Mathematics in his paper "A mathematical theory of communication" (July-October 1948 Bell System Technical Journal; in The Mathematical Theory of Communication 1949). The paper defines various key terms including, most interestingly, ...
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 ...