SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 7 December 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 1 December 2025
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Lennon, J Robert
(1970- ) US author whose earlier works, though they occasionally imply the fantastic, can be understood in terms of a heated, surreally dense naturalism. In its depiction of a small town transfigured by a domineering entrepreneur, Happyland (cut version July-October 2006 Harper's; 2013 ebook) edges into the Horror inscape of a writer like Jonathan Carroll; Familiar (2012), on the other hand, can be read ...
Proto SF
Meaningful use of the term "proto science fiction" obviously depends on one's Definition of the term Science Fiction, just as the use of the term "taproot texts" [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] depends on a moderately stable definition of the term "fantasy"; indeed, the quest for sf's literary ancestry and "origins" is as much a dimension of ...
Galaxina
Film (1980). Marimark Productions. Written and directed by William Sachs. Executive producer Newton P Jacobs. Producer Marilyn J Tenser. Cast includes J D Hinton, Stephen Macht, Avery Schreiber and Dorothy Stratten. 95 minutes. Colour. / Low-budget, crudely humorous Space Opera. In the year 3008, the Intergalactic Federation Police Cruiser Infinity is sent on a mission to retrieve a powerful blue crystalline artefact, the Blue Star. The titular ...
Crimson Pirate, The
Film (1952). Hecht-Lancaster Productions/Warner Brothers. Produced by Harold Hecht. Directed by Robert Siodmak. Written by Roland Kibbee. Cast includes Eva Bartok, Leslie Bradley, Nick Cravat, James Hayter, Burt Lancaster, Frederick Leister and Torin Thatcher. 105 minutes. Colour. / In the late eighteenth century, the pirate Captain Vallo (Lancaster), also known as The Crimson Pirate, captures a Royal Navy vessel bound for the fictional Caribbean Island 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 ...