SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 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 7 July 2025
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Gong
Rock band, identified as French although they were founded by Australian Daevid Allen (1938-2015) and have included English and American as well as French members. Allen had been working in London in the late 1960s but, temporarily denied a visa, relocated to Paris and formed Gong with his partner, Gilli Smith (1933- ). The group's first album Magick Brother/Mystic Sister (1970) has a rather fairy, and indeed airy-fairy, vibe, inaugurating in rudimentary ...
Coutinho, Albino
(1860-1940) Writer and historian from Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost State of Brazil. He wrote a historical chronicle, Marcha da divisão do Norte: para a história ["March of the North division: for History"] (1896), about the 1893 revolution when Rio Grande clashed with the central government and was defeated. His only incursion into sf is A Liga dos Planetas ["The League of Planets"] (1923), which is considered the ...
Son of Dr Jekyll, The
Film (1951). Columbia Pictures Corporation. Directed by Seymour Friedman. Written by Mortimer Braus, Jack Pollexfen and Edward Huebsch (uncredited); loosely based on Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Cast includes Louis Hayward, Alexander Know, Jody Lawrence and Lester Matthews. 78 minutes. Black and white. / In the prologue, we see the infamous Mr Hyde chased by an angry mob into a house ...
Anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of the genus Homo, especially its species H. sapiens. Physical anthropology deals with the history of H. sapiens and its immediate evolutionary precursors (some of which in fact coexisted with H. sapiens); cultural anthropology (ethnology) deals with the contemporary diversity of human cultures (see also Sociology). The founding fathers of the science – Sir Edward Tylor (1832-1917) and Sir ...
Zip Comics
US Comic (1940-1944). MLJ Magazines Inc (see Archie Adventure Comics). 47 issues. Artists include Charles Biro, John Cassone, Mort Meskin, Irv Novick, Ed Smalle, Lin Streeter and Frank Volpe. Script writers include Otto Binder (see Eando Binder), Joe Blair, Ed Goggin, Mary Goss, Harry Shorten, Lin Streeter and Abner J Sundell. Initially 68 pages (#1-#37), then 60 (#38-#45) and finally 52 ...
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 ...