SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 August 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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Radio
The history of radio sf is badly under-researched, but it is clear that, in some important respects, it anticipates that of Television sf. The major televisual forms – the series, the serial and the anthology – were all originally developed for radio. Many television sf programmes, from Superman and Buck Rogers to The ...
Organlegging
A virtually self-defining sf term based on "bootlegging" and denoting the illicit acquisition of and dealing in human organs and other bodily parts. It was coined by Larry Niven in early stories of his Known Space series, in particular those collected in The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton (coll 1976), beginning with "The Organleggers" (January 1969 Galaxy; vt "Death by Ecstasy" in The Shape of Space, coll ...
Leonard, Lawrence
(1923-2001) UK cellist, conductor, composer and author whose Young Adult tale, The Horn of Mortal Danger (1980), is set primarily Underground beneath London, where an ancient race, distinguishable from surface humans mostly by their small stature (see Great and Small), has flourished for many centuries by carefully imitating life on the surface. From ...
Dan Dare – Pilot of the Future
UK sf Comic-strip character, distinguished in appearance by his long chin and by the zigzag on the outer end of each eyebrow. Dan Dare was created by Frank Hampson for the weekly boys' comic Eagle, in which – with the sobriquet "Pilot of the Future" – he appeared with his Lancashire batman Digby from 1950 until the comic's demise in 1969. Hampson supervised a team of artists, model-makers and photographers to ...
Puccetti, Roland
(1924-1995) US philosopher and author, long professionally involved in mind-body problems. He published several essays on the split-brain controversy, perhaps most accessibly in "Sperry on Consciousness: A Critical Appreciation" for The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy in 1977. Both of his novels deal, in their way, with the question. In The Death of the Führer (1972) Hitler's brain is transplanted into the body of a voluptuous woman, and "his" identity discovered, ...
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 ...