SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 18 February 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 16 February 2026
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McKenzie, John
(? - ) UK author of a Near Future novel, City Whitelight (1986), in which the Cities of the world have become targeted by Disasters of all sorts, from social breakdown to Pandemic; the Cyberpunk tone of the book conveys a sense that there will be no easy outcome for humanity. [JC]
Moonlight Mile
Japanese animated tv series (2007). Produced by Studio Hibari. Directed by Iku Suzuki .Written by Akinori Endo; based on the Manga by Yasuo Otagaki (2000-2022). Music by Kan Sawada. Voice cast includes Hiroaki Hirata and Kazuhiko Inoue. 26 25-minute episodes. Colour. / The story is set in the Near Future, although due to time passing it is now effectively ...
Ireland, David
(1927-2022) Australian author whose A Woman of the Future (1979), his best-known work of sf interest, depicts a bizarre but positively conceived set of futures through which his protagonist searches, and finds congenial. City of Women (1981), on the other hand, presents a Feminist vision of separatism whose ending befits its Alice in Wonderland style, as the vision turns out to be the hallucination of a lonely woman. ...
Golden Heroes
Role Playing Game (1984). Games Workshop (GW). Designed by Simon Burley, Peter Haines. / Golden Heroes, like Villains and Vigilantes (1979) and Champions (1981), is an early Role Playing Game with a Superhero theme. Its mechanics are generally well designed and closely match the ...
Panspermia
Panspermia is the speculative notion that life may spread around the universe via drifting seeds or spores that provide a starting-point for Evolution on planets. The concept is ancient, dating back to Anaxagoras (circa 500 BCE-428 BCE), but was revived by such scientists as Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) and Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Panspermia has been seriously elaborated upon by Fred ...
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 ...