SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 18 April 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 14 April 2025
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Fourth Kind, The
Film (2009). Universal Pictures and Gold Circle Films presents a Chambara Pictures and Dead Crow Pictures production in association with Focus Films, Fourth Kind Productions and Saga Film. Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi. Written by Osunsanmi with Terry Robbins. Cast includes Enzo Cilenti, Raphaël Coleman, Corey Johnson, Milla Jovovich, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Elias Koteas, Mia Mckenna-Bruce, Charlotte Milchard and Will Patton. 98 minutes. Colour. / A psychologist (see ...
Farr, David
(1969- ) UK director, screenwriter, playwright and author, active in various capacities in the UK Theatre from around 1990, including the direction of several plays. The dramaturgical thrust of several of his dramas engage with Fantastika, though at times only metaphorically. The Nativity (performed 1999; 1999 chap) edgily literalizes various miracles and manifestations clustered around Mary the ...
Science Fiction Foundation
UK research unit set up in 1971 at the North East London Polytechnic (which became the University of East London in 1992), but semi-autonomous, being controlled by a council, partly academics and partly sf professionals, and including George Hay, whose enthusiasm had much to do with the SFF's inception. Peter Nicholls, the first administrator (1971-1977), was followed by Malcolm Edwards ...
Bogart, William G
(1903-1977) US editor and author of Pulp fiction from the late 1930s, best known under his own name for the Johnny Saxon series of nonfantastic thrillers beginning with Hell on Fridays (1940), noirishly illuminating about the pulp magazine word, including publishers like Street and Smith. He is best known for his contributions to the Doc Savage series as one of the authors publishing under the ...
Hargreaves, Gerald
(1881-1972) UK politician, judge, composer, playwright and author, in active service during World War One. He is of some sf interest for his only published play, Atalanta: A Story of Atlantis: A Fantasy with Music (1948) as by His Honour Judge Sir Gerald Hargreaves (see Atlantis), a musical drama based, according to his introduction, on Plato's Critias (circa 350 BCE) ...
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 ...