SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 14 August 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 10 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Nahum, Maurice
(1916-1994) UK publisher and editor who was Samuel Assael's junior partner in the John Spencer and Co publishing enterprise (1946-1983), best known or most infamous for its Badger Books (which see) imprint. Assael and Nahum co-edited three of the four 1950s Spencer sf magazines given separate entries in this encyclopedia: Futuristic Science Stories (1950-1954) under the pseudonym ...
Thriller
US letter-size weird fiction magazine printed on cheap newsprint. Publisher: Myron Fass as Tempest Publications. Editor: Myron Fass. Three issues: February, May and July 1962. Publication, nominally bimonthly, was erratic. / Thriller was not a Media Magazine as such, but is nevertheless sought after by collectors of Monster Movies magazines owing to its rarity and its connection ...
Terror Beneath the Sea
Japanese/US film (1966; vt Water Cyborg; vt Agent X-2: Operation Underwater; vt Battle Beneath the Sea). Directed by Hajime Sato. Written by Kōichi Ōtsu. Cast includes Shin'ichi "Sonny" Chiba, Franz Gruber, Andrew Hughes, Peggy Neal and Erik Neilson. 84 minutes (Japan); 79 minutes (US). Colour. / Journalists aboard a submarine watching the demonstration of a new homing torpedo appear to glimpse an underwater man on the ...
Tangerine Dream
German electronic music group, founded by Edgar Froese in 1967. Their line-up has changed a good deal over the years – Klaus Schulze was a member for a time – although as of 2007 the group comprises Froese and musician Thorsten Quaeschning (1963- ). Their first release, Electronic Meditation (1970) owes much to musique concrète, using cut-and-pasted audio tape to ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...