SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 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 16 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Dietz, William C
(1945-2026) US author who began to publish sf with War World (1986; vt Galactic Bounty 1997), the first volume of his Sam McCade sequence of sf adventures about an interstellar bounty hunter, which continued with Imperial Bounty (1988) and two further titles. The galactic venue of the series exhibits some interesting kinks, and McCade himself gradually gains individuality. Although the angle of approach differs – the protagonist this time ...
Gretta, J Clemens
Working name of US illustrator Joseph Clemens Gretter (1904-1988); he began signing his work simply as "Gretta" in the early 1930s. He illustrated many volumes for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, mostly for nonfantastic series like The Hardy Boys and the X Bar X Boys, though occasionally he did sf covers, like that for Castaways of the Stratosphere; Or, Hunting the Vanished Balloonists (1935) as by Franklin W ...
Itō, Junji
(1963- ) Japanese Comics artist and writer. After a few years working as a dental technician he became a full-time Manga artist. Most of Itō's output is Horror, but often incorporates other Fantastika genres; his influences include manga artists Kazuo Umezu and Hideshi Hino, plus authors Yasutaka Tsutsui and H P ...
Akira
Animated film (1988). Akira Committee. Directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo, from a screenplay by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on the graphic epic Akira (December 1982-June 1990 Young Magazine) by Otomo. Animation studio: Asahi. Chief animator: Takashi Nakamura. 124 minutes. Colour. / In its day Akira was the most successful attempt yet to transfer sophisticated, state-of-the-art Comic-book graphics to ...
Norco
Videogame (2022). Published by Raw Fury AB. Developed by Geography of Robots. Designed and written by Yuts. Platforms: Win, Mac. / In this independent point-and-click Adventure game, players take on the role of itinerant American loner Kay Madère, who is returning to her hometown of Norco, Louisiana in the wake of her mother's death. What initially appears to be a elegiac piece of southern gothic is quickly revealed ...
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 ...