SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 15 June 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.
Site updated on 15 June 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Yolen, Jane
(1939-2026) US author, partially resident in Scotland, who began publishing poems and articles when still in college, and who first came to notice with books for children, the first of many being Pirates in Petticoats (1963). Of her circa 460 titles, many of which won awards in her field, most were for children (see listing below for some of these), many of them being picture books for younger children; most of her adult fiction, of which she wrote relatively little, was ...
Bawden, Edward
(1903-1989) UK painter and illustrator, conspicuously versatile and active from the mid-1920s to the end of his life; his vivid graphic style – in which spaces and perspectives are controlled through powerfully architectonic linear patterning enabled through his innovative skill as a lino cutter – became very widely known in Britain. He provided illustrations and covers for several books of genre interest, including (by dates of editions he illustrated) Lance de Giberne ...
Aliens
This is the term, in both sf and popular culture, used to indicate sentient extraterrestrial beings – creatures from other worlds endowed with reason, consciousness, thought, Intelligence (the terms for and conceptions of this vital but slippery quality vary). Aliens may have minds somewhat less capable than ours, of comparable capacity, of greater (even vastly greater) power, or minds so different that comparison becomes impossible. They may appear as ...
Tank Girl: The Movie
Film (1995). United Artists Pictures presents a Trilogy Entertainment Group production. Directed by Rachel Talalay. Written by Tedi Sarafian, based on the Comic strip Tank Girl (1988-1995) in Deadline magazine, created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin and originally drawn by Hewlett. Cast includes Ann Magnuson, Malcolm McDowell, Lori Petty, Iggy Pop, Stacy Linn Ramsower, Ice-T and Naomi Watts. 104 minutes. Colour. / A tank-riding female ...
TV Sci-Fi Monthly
UK tabloid-size Cinema magazine. Published by Sportscene Publishers, Limited. No editor credit in early issues; later ones list Mick Farren as editor or co-editor. Eight issues, all with copyright date 1976; month not given. / An "oversize" publication which focused on various Television programmes, TV Sci-Fi Monthly carried Interviews and articles as well as its ...
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 ...