SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 2025
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 7 July 2025
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Sap Nin
["Ten Years"] Film (2015 Hong Kong). Ten Years Studio. Directed by Ng Ka-leung, Jevons Au, Chow Kwun-wai, Wong Fei-Pang, Kwok Zune, starring Peter Chan, Wong Ching, Lau Ho-Chi, Leung Kin-Ping, Liu Kai-chi, Siu Hin Ng. Screenplay by various hands. 104 minutes. Colour. / An anthology piece of five Near-Future Dystopian vignettes about life in Hong Kong in the year 2025, made for an impressively low budget. All are conceived ...
Delany, Samuel R
(1942- ) US critic and author, one of the most influential and most discussed within the genre; he has taught at several universities from 1975, and was professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst 1988-1999, of English at SUNY Buffalo 1999-2000, and of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia since 2001. He has a somewhat mixed cultural background: he is Black, born and raised in Harlem, New York, and therefore ...
Pastoral
The term "pastoral" can be understood in various ways, perhaps most usefully as being descriptive of a mode, where Arcadia [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] may be thought of as a particular location where the pastoral mode can unfold. The term can refer to the Classical or Shakespearean tale of courtiers holidaying among nymphs and shepherds, flirting with a condition of exile; it can refer, as William ...
Jensen, Norman
(1933- ) UK author of The Galactic Colonizers (1971), an sf adventure for Robert Hale Limited involving encounters with unusual Aliens. [JC]
Barren, Charles
(1913-1999) UK teacher and author, best known for historical romances; co-author with R Cox Abel of Trivana I (1966), in which an overpopulated Earth uses the titular Spaceship (powered by an Ion Drive) to establish a Venus colony (see Colonization of Other Worlds). Barren also scripted a sf drama, "The Planet 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 reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...