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Thursday 16 July 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 14 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
de Listonai, Mr
Attributed pseudonym of French author Daniel Jost de Villeneuve, whose full name may have been Daniel Jost de Villeneuve de Listonai (17??-17??); his Proto SF tale, Le Voyageur Philosophe dans un Pays Inconnu aux Inhabitants de la Terre (1761 2vols; trans Brian Stableford as The Philosophic Voyager in an Island Unknown to the Inhabitants of Earth 2015), carries its protagonist by space ship to the ...
Ziff-Davis
US magazine publishing house, notionally founded in 1927 (but see below) and based in Chicago until 1950, then New York. The parent company was the William B Ziff Company, which began as an advertising agency in 1920, acquired a Chicago publishing house in 1993, and after early humorous magazine ventures – during which Bernard George Davis (1906-1972) joined William Bernard Ziff Sr (1898-1953) as principal editor – began to publish Popular Aviation in 1927. The advertising ...
Cabin in the Woods, The
Film (2012). Lionsgate presents a Mutant Enemy production in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists. Directed by Drew Goddard. Written by Goddard and Joss Whedon. Cast includes Amy Acker, Kristen Connolly, Tim DeZarn, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Richard Jenkins, Fran Kranz, Sigourney Weaver, Brian J White, Bradley Whitford and Jesse Williams. 95 minutes. Colour. / The Clichés of "slasher" ...
Destination Moon
Film (1950). A George Pal Production/Eagle-Lion. Directed by Irving Pichel. Written by Robert A Heinlein, Alford "Rip" Van Ronkel, James O'Hanlon, based loosely on Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) by Heinlein. Cast includes Warner Anderson, John Archer, Tom Powers and Dick Wesson. 92 minutes. Colour. / Destination Moon, the first of George Pal's many sf productions, ...
Corley, James
(1947- ) UK author and computer programmer whose first novel, Benedict's Planet (1976), combines Space Opera and some rather technical speculations about the possibility of Faster-than-Light travel in a somewhat overcrowded tale in which the discoverer of a new source of fuel runs into complex trouble. Neither Orsini Godbase (1978) nor Sundrinker (1980), ...
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 ...