SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 16 September 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 14 September 2026
Sponsor of the day: Kees van Toorn and LAcon V
Being John Malkovich
Film (1999). Gramercy Pictures presents a Propaganda Films/Single Cell Pictures production. Directed by Spike Jonze. Written by Charlie Kaufman. Cast includes John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener and John Malkovich. 112 minutes. Colour. / A professionally thwarted puppeteer (Cusack) takes a job in an idiosyncratic office where he discovers a portal which gives fifteen-minute access into the head of a real-life actor, John Malkovich ...
Turtledove, Harry
(1949- ) US author and academic who has made use of his field of scholarship (his PhD was in Byzantine history) to create all his best-known work, including several associational historical novels as by H N Turteltaub. The fantasy Videssos Cycle – The Misplaced Legion (1987), An Emperor for the Legion (1987), The Legion of Videssos (1987) and Swords of the Legion (1987), with the Krispos sequence, ...
Hadley, Arthur T
(1924-2015) US journalist and author; in his Near Future Satire, The Joy Wagon (1958), a Robot with a Computer brain known as Minivac runs for President in a sharply comic send-up of the US electoral system, and almost wins. Hadley should not be confused with his grandfather, the nonfiction writer and academic Arthur Twining Hadley (1856-1930) [JC] ...
McDevitt, Jack
Working name of US author John Charles McDevitt (1935- ), who began publishing sf with "The Emerson Effect" in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine for December 1981, coming to prominence with "Cryptic" (April 1983 Asimov's), a tale whose theme – First Contact between humans and the Alien races who are sending ...
Glaberson, Cory
(? - ) US author and game designer who began to publish work of genre interest with the Cinema review column "Magic Lantern Show" in American Fantasy for Fall 1986, with further instalments appearing in the same magazine to Winter 1988. He co-wrote the Combat Command Gamebook Dorsai's Command (1987) with Troy ...
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 ...