SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 20 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 20 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Watson, Ian
(1943-2026) UK teacher and author who lectured in English in Tanzania (1965-1967) and Tokyo (1967-1970) before beginning to publish sf with "Roof Garden Under Saturn" for New Worlds in 1969; he then taught Future Studies for six years at Birmingham Polytechnic, taking there one of the first academic courses in sf in the UK; he became a full-time writer in 1976, publishing around 200 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
Hulbert, Archer Butler
(1873-1933) US academic, historian and author, whose Lost World tale, The Queen of Quelparte: A Story of Russian Intrigue in the Far East (1904), is set on the eponymous Island between Japan and China, where intrigues invoking ancient ways are required to save the land from imperial predators. [JC]
Spider-Man 2
Film (2004). Columbia Pictures presents a Marvel Enterprises/Laura Ziskin production. Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Alvin Sargent, based on the Marvel Comic book by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko. Cast includes Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Tobey Maguire and Alfred Molina. 127 minutes. Colour. / Spider-Man 2, Raimi's idiosyncratic sequel, sees Peter Parker (Maguire) deal with the problems ...
Scheerbart, Paul
(1863-1915) German author, who also wrote as by Kuno Küfer; most of his sf and fantasy remained untranslated until the twenty-first century. Lesabéndio: Ein Asteroiden-Roman Mit 14 Strichätzungen von Alfred Kubin auf Tafeln (1913; trans Christina Svendsen as Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel 2012) is a Utopia set far from our solar system in a planetoid called Pallas; the eponymous ...
4: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Film (2007). Twentieth Century Fox in association with Constantin Films and Marvel Studios presents a 1492 Entertainment/Bernd Eichinger production. Directed by Tim Story. Written by Don Payne and Mark Frost; story by John Turman and Frost, based on the Marvel Comic by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Cast includes Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Laurence ...
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 ...