SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 13 January 2025
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Devolution
Sf is usually an optimistic genre, and stories of Evolution on the whole envisage humanity as slowly progressing to higher states. However, a persistent pessimistic note in Genre SF generally, and to a degree in mainstream sf too, has been to imagine the opposite, the devolution or degeneration of mankind. The note was sounded most famously in H G Wells's The Time Machine (1895), in which ...
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Film (2014). Twentieth Century Fox in association with TSG Entertainment. Directed by Matt Reeves. Written by Mark Bomback and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, based on characters created by Jaffa & Silver. Cast includes Jason Clarke, Toby Kebbell, Karin Konoval, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Andy Serkis, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Nick Thurston. 130 minutes. Colour, 3D. / Ten years after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes ...
Olemy, P T
Pseudonym (ie Ptolemy) of US author George Baker (? - ) of two spoofish thrillers, Pink Dolphin (1967) and The Transgressors (1967). In his sf novel, The Clones (1968), Clones, because of their powers of Communication, may be able to save Earth from Invasion by Aliens; or in fact help Earth ...
Burton, Tim
(1958- ) US filmmaker, resident in the UK since 2002, all of whose films have been fantasy of one kind or another. An animator by background who has intermittently returned to the medium, Burton made his live-action debut on Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985) and had a surprise hit with his second feature Beetlejuice (1988), which landed him the high-stakes job of directing Warner's prize project Batman. A major success, it led to three ...
Marvel Preview
US letter-size black-and-white Comics magazine. 34 issues, July 1975 to February 1983, printed on cheap newsprint-quality paper by the Marvel Comics subsidiary imprint Curtis Magazines. The title changed to Bizarre Adventures from #24 (1980) on to the end; the final issue was published in standard Comics format on glossy paper. Dennis O'Neil was usually the credited ...
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 ...