SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 10 February 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 3 February 2025
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Wu Ming-Yi
(1971- ) Taiwanese academic, artist and author whose Near Future sf novel, Fu Yan Ren (2011; trans Derryl Sterk as The Man with the Compound Eyes 2013), describes with parable-like intensity the intersection of a vast Island of polluted matter (known as the Great Pacific Trash Vortex) with the civilizations which have created it (see Climate Change; ...
Batman Films
The DC Comics character Batman has a long history in film, with six principal franchise strands: (i) the Columbia serials of the 1940s, 1-2; (ii) the 1966 Fox television series and its spinoff film 3; (iii) the Burton-Schumacher film cycle for Warners, 4-5, 7-8; (iv) feature-length animations spun off from Warners' various animated television series, 6, 9-11, 13; (v) Warners' Nolan-Goyer ...
It Came from Outer Space
Film (1953). Universal. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Harry Essex, based on a screen treatment by Ray Bradbury. Cast includes Richard Carlson, Charles Drake and Barbara Rush. 80 minutes. 3-D. Black and white. / This was Arnold's, and Universal's, first venture into the sf/Horror genre; it was also the first sf film to exploit a desert location (here the Mojave Desert), and the ...
Space Busters
US Comic (1952). Two issues. Approved Comics, Inc (see Ziff-Davis). Artists include Allen Anderson, Murphy Anderson, Bernie Krigstein and Norman Saunders. Three Space Busters and one other strip per issue, plus 2-3 short non-fiction pieces. / With the opening Space Busters tale most of our Solar System has been conquered (see ...
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 ...