SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 16 November 2025
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 November 2025
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Wilks, Mike
(1947- ) UK illustrator and author, who began to publish drawings of genre interest with his highly intricate, architecturally imaginative portrayal of the eponymous Edifice or City conceived in conjunction with a long narrative poem by Brian W Aldiss as Pile: Petals from St Klaed's Computer (graph 1979). Pile itself – drawn by Wilks in terms evocative of the work of M C ...
Hunter, Mel
Working name of American artist Milford Joseph Hunter III (1927-2004). After growing up with an abusive father, Hunter attended Northwestern University in Illinois before moving to California, where he worked as an artist for Northrop Aircraft Corporation. But he began seeking employment as a freelance artist, and in early 1953 he sold his first cover to Galaxy magazine, depicting some men preparing a spaceship for flight, unusually observed from above. As early ...
Clayton, Jo
(1939-1998) US author, most of whose work consists of a long series of science-fantasy Space Operas of extended quests in highly coloured venues; as the years of her career passed, her work became more and more fantasy-oriented. The sequence divides into the Diadem books – Diadem from the Stars (1977), which romantically sets out the epic adventures of Aleytey, a young girl electronically attached to the power-bestowing diadem of the ...
Sleeper Awakes
As the nineteenth century progressed and the planet became more and more thoroughly explored, authors of Utopias and Dystopias began to abandon present-day Lost Worlds and Islands as venues for their ideal societies, and instead to locate their speculations in the future, perhaps hundreds of years hence. Almost always these speculations were framed by prologues (and sometimes ...
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Film (2014). Twentieth Century Fox in association with TSG Entertainment. Directed by Matt Reeves. Written by Mark Bomback and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, based on characters created by Jaffa & Silver. Cast includes Jason Clarke, Toby Kebbell, Karin Konoval, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Andy Serkis, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Nick Thurston. 130 minutes. Colour, 3D. / Ten years after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes ...
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 ...