SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 10 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.
Site updated on 6 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Norminton, Gregory
(1976- ) UK anthologist and author whose first novel, The Ship of Fools (2002), places an exorbitantly various and marginally fantasticated examples of Homo sapiens taken fairly directly from "The Ship of Fools" (before 1500) by Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450-1516) (see Ship of Fools), where they disport dismayedly. Arts and Wonders (2004) exploits another medieval/renaissance topos, the ...
Passing Show, The
UK weekly paper of humour and short fiction which had two distinct incarnations, both published by Odhams Press, London. The first series ran for 918 issues from 20 March 1915 to 19 March 1932. This was a small tabloid-size magazine, initially with wartime paper restrictions, that gradually grew in size to become a standard tabloid from January 1924. The emphasis was on cartoons and brief humorous stories, but it occasionally ran to longer items and is probably best remembered, in this ...
Matter Duplication
This sf trope is a logical spinoff from the concept of Matter Transmission (which see). A malfunctioning matter transmitter may produce duplicates of the persons or objects transported, as has happened more than once with the Star Trek transporter: there is a duplicate Captain Kirk in the original-series episode "The Enemy Within" (1966) and an evil duplicate Spock in James Blish's ...
Roeg, Nicolas
(1928-2018) UK director who entered the Cinema industry as an editing apprentice in 1947, rising to cinematographer in 1959 and working in this capacity on (inter alia) the Edgar Allan Poe-based The Masque of the Red Death (1964) directed by Roger Corman and the Ray Bradbury-based Fahrenheit 451 (1966) directed by François ...
Adventures of Brisco County, Jr, The
US tv series (1993-1994). Boam/Cuse Productions for Warner Bros. Series creators/executive producers Jeffrey Boam, Carlton Cuse. Coproduced by David Simkins, Paul Marks. Writers included Boam, Cuse, Simkins, Brad Kern, John McNamara, John Wirth. Directors included Kim Manners, Andy Tennant. Starred Bruce Campbell as Brisco, Julius Carry as Lord Bowler, Christian Clemenson as Socrates Poole. Recurring players included Billy Drago as John Bly, Kelly Rutherford as Dixie Cousins, John ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...