SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 12 March 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.
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Yokoyama Eiji
(1953- ) Japanese artist and Manga illustrator, who quit his design company job in 1981, the same year as his comics debut, "Richigi-na Gendai" ["The Age of Integrity"] (graph 1981 Comic Ryū). Other notable early works include Scramble Kekka ["Scramble Effect"] (graph 1982 Shōnen Champion) and Monthly Planet (graph 1985 S-F Magazine), all gag strips depicting ...
Chatterton, E Keble
(1878-1944) UK author, active from around the turn of the century, best known for nonfiction works on maritime history, and for his dramatic depictions of naval warfare; he commanded a navy mine-sweeper during World War One. Of his fiction, the Z-Rays sequence – comprising Through Sea and Air (1929), Adventurers of the Air (1930) and The Sky Riders (1930) – is of most sf interest, as a European ...
Thompson, Donald
(? - ) US author of two novels of sf interest: in The Ancient Enemy (1979), civilization is threatened by killer cockroaches (see Horror in SF); and The Next Encounter (1982) features an Invasion of Earth by UFO-based Aliens. [JC]
Biheguan Zhuren
["Master of the Jade Lotus Pavilion"] Pseudonym of Jin Zuoli (? -? ), a Chinese author whose first work of genre note Huangjin Shijie ["Golden World"] (1907 Xiaoshuo Lin) imagined Chinese coolies in America resisting a real-world 1894 racial exclusion law by founding a Utopian community. Inspired in part by the fiction of Liang Qichao, he subsequently wrote ...
Dreamscape
Film (1984). Bella Productions/Zupnik-Curtis Enterprises. Directed by Joseph Ruben. Written by David Loughery, Chuck Russell, Ruben, based on a story by Loughery. Cast includes Eddie Albert, Kate Capshaw, David Patrick Kelly, Christopher Plummer, Dennis Quaid and Max Von Sydow. 99 minutes. Colour. / A gambler with psychic powers (Quaid) is persuaded to take part in experiments in "dreamlinking" at a research centre. He learns how to enter other people's dreams and interact with them. ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...