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
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Polygon
Russian animated short film (1977). Original title Poligon; vt Proving Ground; vt Firing Range. Soyuzmultfilm. Directed by Anatoly Petrov. Written by Sever Gansovsky. Voice cast includes Alexander Beliavsky, Anatoly Kuznetsov, S Martynov, Oleg Mokshantsev and Vsevolod Yakut. Ten minutes. Colour. / Polygon is based on Gansovsky's short story "Poligon" (1966 Vokrug sveta #9; trans Matthew J O'Connell as "The Proving ...
Prehistoric Women
1. US film (1950). Alliance Productions, Inc. Produced by Albert J Cohen. Directed by Gregg C Tallas. Written by Tallas, and Sam X Abarbanel. Cast includes Judy Landon, Laurette Luez, Mara Lynn, Allan Nixon and Joan Shawlee. Narrator: David Vaile. 74 minutes. Colour. / Amazon princess Tigri (Luez) and her Stone Age friends have driven all males away some time prior to the start of this Prehistoric SF film; but, being practical, they capture ...
Dissevelt, Tom
(1921-1989) Dutch instrumentalist and composer, working on the borderlands between electronic, jazz and pop. His early releases were moderately ground-breaking in terms of the sonic palette he created from often home-built electronic instruments. His debut album Song of the Second Moon (1957) which contained the remarkable "Sonik Re-entry", a genuinely extraordinary piece of music half a century ahead of its time. His biggest success came with Fantasy in Orbit ...
Watson, Tom
(1982- ) UK author whose first novel Metronome (2022) is set in a Near Future Dystopian UK where women have lost control of their bodies (see Sex; Women in SF); the protagonists, a young couple planning to conceive without permission, have been exiled to a northern Island. The focus on these years (see ...
Extro
Northern Irish SF Magazine, Slick A4 format. Published bimonthly by Specifi Publications. Edited by Paul Campbell (1949-2021), with David Langford billed as nonfiction editor from #2. Three issues, dated February/March, April/May and July/August 1982. / During its brief slick-format existence Extro published fiction by Brian W Aldiss, Richard ...
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 ...