SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Triffid
Well-known Term denoting the ambulant, Poison-stinging, vegetable Monsters which harass the mostly blinded remnants of humanity in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (6 January-3 February 1951 Collier's Weekly; as "Revolt of the Triffids"; 1951; rev 1951; orig version vt Revolt of the Triffids ...
Tomb Mold
Canada death metal band formed in Toronto in 2016 by guitarists Derek Vella and Payson Power, and drummer and vocalist Max Klebanoff. Their album Planetary Clairvoyance (2019) is a collection of Horror-In-SF themed songs, forming an overarching concept about the end of life across the universe. This can be due to "cosmic radiance" as on "Beg for Life", or an "alien hybrid designed to decimate" on "Infinite Resurrection". ...
Deca-Dence
Japanese animated tv series (2020). Created by the Deca-Dence Project. NUT. Directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa. Written by Hiroshi Seko. Voice cast includes Katsuyuki Konishi, Tomori Kusunoki and Michiyo Murase. Twelve 23-minute episodes. Colour. / The first episode presents us with a generic Anime scenario: long ago the Gadoll, Monsters of varying size and shape, wiped out 90% of Earth's population; the ...
Karp, David
(1922-1999) US author whose sf novel One (1953; vt Escape to Nowhere 1955) is a notable Mainstream use of sf modes as a way of expressing Dystopian views about the future. Though distinctly less convincing than such predecessors as Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon (1940) or George Orwell's ...
Billias, Stephen
(1949- ) US author whose first novel, The American Book of the Dead (1987), makes use of Zen points of view in a picaresque approach to an understanding of Holocaust involving many encounters as World War Three breaks out, some with talking monkeys (see Apes as Human) including Tarzan's Cheetah, and potential salvation by ...
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 reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...