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.
Site updated on 6 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Theater Five
Radio series (1964-1965; vt Theatre-Five; vt Theater 5). ABC-Radio Network. Directors included Ted Bell, Harry Nelson and Warren Sommerville. Writers included Lillian Anderson, Sherman Dryer, Richard McCracken, Robert Newman, Saul Panitz, William N Robson and Lawrence Weinberg. Announcer and host: Fred Foy. 260 20-minute episodes, of which 256 episodes survive. / A late effort by ABC to revive US radio drama, ...
Killdozer
Made-for-tv film (1974). Universal TV/ABC. Directed by Jerry London. Teleplay Richard Mackillop, Theodore Sturgeon, based on Sturgeon's "Killdozer!" (November 1944 Astounding). Cast includes Carl Betz, Neville Brand and Clint Walker. 74 minutes. Colour. / Though derived from Sturgeon's own well-known story about a huge bulldozer that becomes possessed by a seemingly Alien force – actually ...
Vollmann, William T
(1959- ) US author whose work frequently utilizes sf topoi, in which context he exhibits none of the dis-ease typical of late twentieth-century Mainstream Writers of SF, a group to which he might plausibly be thought to belong. His vast gawping omnivorous oeuvre – comprising both fiction and intensely committed gonzo reportage – evokes in fact writers as far removed as Herman ...
Clifford, John
Working name of UK author John Clifford Bayliss (1919-2008), the young protagonists of whose Atlantis Adventure (1958) discover the eponymous Lost World in an oceanic trench in the Caribbean Sea, where they discover ancient relics, sea Monsters and Robots; unfortunately, their experimental nuclear submarine breaches the walls keeping the ocean at bay, though the youths make their escape. ...
Drew, Wayland
(1932-1998) Canadian teacher and author, often on environment issues as they affect Canada and its indigenous peoples, who began publishing sf with The Wabeno Feast (1973), a complex tale about Holocaust and its roots, in which three narrative strands all tangibly cohere – the eighteenth-century journal of an early entrepreneur who confronts the heart of darkness in the pale wabeno (an Indian shaman), the canoe trip of a Canadian couple through ...
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 ...