SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Greer, Andrew Sean
(1970- ) US author whose early stories, assembled in How It Was for Me (coll 2000), veer toward the metaphorical in their attempts to create iconic tales of American life today, but whose novels more successfully allow their fantastic elements to illuminate the world. In The Path of Minor Planets (2001), the lives of two scientists who dispute discovery of a Comet periodically change in tune with the comet's ...
Demon Seed
Film (1977). MGM. Directed by Donald Cammell. Written by Robert Jaffe, Roger O Hirson, based on Demon Seed (1973) by Dean R Koontz. Cast includes Julie Christie, Gerrit Graham, Berry Kroeger and Fritz Weaver. 95 minutes. Colour. / When the supercomputer Proteus IV is switched on it refuses to obey instructions, in the time-honoured tradition (for examples of which, see ...
Mayne, Andrew
(1973- ) US stage magician and author, probably best known in the former capacity; his fiction is various, some of it comprising nonfantastic thrillers [not listed below]. He is of sf interest for three series: the Chronological Man sequence beginning with The Chronological Man: The Monster in the Mist (2011 ebook), adventures in Steampunk-inflected venues; the Station Breaker sequence beginning with ...
FAAn Awards
Short, partly acronymic name for the Fan (or Fanzine) Activity Achievement Awards first presented in 1975 for 1974 activity in Fandom, principally in Fanzines, and chosen by popular vote, initially with a small voting fee. The original categories were for best single issue of a fanzine, best fan writer, best fan editor, best fan artist – subdivided into serious and humorous categories – and best LoC ...
Borgese, Elisabeth Mann
(1918-2002) German-born scholar and author, daughter of Thomas Mann (1875-1955), in US from the 1930s, in Canada from 1979; as a central figure in the gradual evolution of international ocean law in the twentieth century, she provided cultural prestige to the campaign to preserve the world's oceans, wrote books fervently arguing the case that humans must take collective responsibility for them, and founded the International Ocean Institute in 1972. She won the Order of Canada in 1980. Her sf is ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...