SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 12 June 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 8 June 2026
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Hollow Earth Expedition
Role Playing Game (2006). Exile Game Studio. Designed by Jeff Combos, Jason Carl, Jim Cook, Chris Goe, Tyler Running Deer. / Hollow Earth Expedition is a light-hearted homage to Pulp magazine stories describing the perilous exploration of a Hollow Earth, and their predecessors in the work of such authors as Jules Verne. The tone, which is both ...
Temple, William F
(1914-1989) UK author who began his activities in the sf world before World War Two as an active fan, a member of the British Interplanetary Society and editor of its Bulletin, and a flatmate of Arthur C Clarke. He began to publish work of genre interest with "The Kosso" in Thrills (anth 1935) edited anonymously by Charles Birkin (1907-1986), a Horror in SF tale in which a tree, given ...
Moffatt, James
(1922-1993) Canadian-born UK author who wrote at least 290 novels in several genres under at least forty-five pseudonyms, including the Hank Janson House Name (though no Janson sf titles) and Richard Allen, a personal pseudonym for the non-sf Skin books. In the 1960s he wrote the first chapter of a novel which, when taken over by Michael Moorcock according to a practice very common in ...
Man of Steel
American film (2013). Warner Brothers/Legendary Pictures/Syncopy. Directed by Zack Snyder. Written by David S Goyer, based on a story by Goyer and Christopher Nolan using characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Cast includes Amy Adams, Henry Cavill, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon, Antje Traue and Ayelet Zurer. 143 minutes. Colour. / In this version of the ...
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 ...