SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 12 April 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.
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Freud, Sigmund
(1856-1939) Austrian neurologist, psychoanalyst and author, father figure in the creation of psychoanalysis, the central twentieth-century explanatory discipline of Psychology. He has been inevitably and rightly associated with doctrinal extremities in theory and practice, and his reputation as a scientist of the mind has suffered, perhaps unduly (see Imaginary Science; ...
Frayn, Michael
(1933- ) UK journalist, playwright and author, best known for such work outside the sf field as the novel Towards the End of the Morning (1967; vt Against Entropy 1967), which despite its vt is not sf, and for Copenhagen (performed 1998; 2001), which examines the historical meeting during World War Two between Niels Bohr (1885-1962) and Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976). The Tin Men ...
Ordinary Joe
US tv series (2021-2022). Production companies included 3 Arts Entertainment, Friend and Lerner Productions and Universal Television for NBC. Created by Russel Friend, Gerrett Lerner and Caleb Ransom. Executive producers include Rafi Crohn, Russel Friend and Adam Kassan. Directors include Shaz Bennett, Adam Davidson and Chris Koch. Writers include Sylvia Batey Alcala, Russel Friend and Garrett Lerner. Cast includes Elizabeth Lail, Natalie Martinez, Eric Payne, Adam Rodriguez and James ...
Pearson's Weekly
UK 16pp tabloid magazine published by C A Pearson Ltd, edited by Peter Keary and others. Weekly, 26 July 1890 to 1 April 1939. Retitled The New Pearson and Today from 17 September 1938, and The New Pearson's Weekly from 26 November 1938. Incorporated into Tit-Bits from 8 April 1939. / Pearson's Weekly was the first magazine C Arthur Pearson set up when he left the employ of George Newnes in 1890 and it was notable for its publicity stunts. Right from the first ...
Wasteland
Videogame (1988). Interplay Productions. Designed by Alan Pavlish, Michael A Stackpole, Ken St Andre. Platforms: AppleII, C64, DOS. / Wasteland is a Computer Role Playing Game, played in a two-dimensional overhead view and set in the twenty-first-century Nevada desert, many years after an apocalyptic nuclear war. This milieu has a similar flavour to the future ...
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 ...