SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 11 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.
Site updated on 10 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
2001: A Space Odyssey
1. Film (1968). Produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Written by Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke, based very loosely on Clarke's "The Sentinel" (Spring 1951 10 Story Fantasy as "Sentinel of Eternity"; vt in Expedition to Earth, coll 1953). Cast includes Keir Dullea, Leonard Rossiter, Gary Lockwood, Douglas Rain and William Sylvester. 141 minutes, cut from 160 ...
Galbraith, John Kenneth
(1908-2006) Canadian-born US economist, famous and prolific, perhaps best known for The Affluent Society (1958), though the reasons for his renown are multifarious. Of sf interest is The McLandress Dimension (coll 1963; rev 1968 as by John Kenneth Galbraith) as by Mark Epernay, a series of mock-essays explaining advances in psychometry – the quantitative measurement of human actions and motives – accomplished by Herchel ...
King, Rufus
(1893-1966) US author, mostly of detective fiction, in whose complicated sf novel, The Fatal Kiss Mystery (1928), two young lovers are entangled and separated and reunited by an Invention the formula for whose development they find in a trunk and whose effect – the total disappearance of those exposed to its rays – is explained either in terms of Invisibility or other ...
Fawcett, Fausto
(1957- ) Working name of Brazilian author, songwriter and singer who entered Rio de Janeiro's musical scene with spoken word albums and shows displaying a hip-hop edge and lyrics with strong, surreal imagery: Fausto Fawcett e os Robôs Efêmeros ["Fausto Fawcett and the Ephemeral Robots"] (1987) and Império dos Sentidos ["Empire of the Senses"] (1989). His written sf is an expansion of his songs ...
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 ...