SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 8 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 3 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Willits, Malcolm
(1934-2019) US film director, bookseller, editor and author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "To Not Be Worthy" in Destiny for Winter 1950, along with several other early stories in that journal (see Amateur Magazine), which he himself co-edited with Jim Bradley. He is of more direct sf interest for The Wonderful Edison Time Machine: A Celebration of Life (1999), a Young Adult ...
Waugh, Sylvia
(1935-2022), UK teacher, librarian, careers adviser and author whose first book was the children's fantasy The Mennyms (1993), about a miniature Wainscot Society comprising a single family living quasi-secretly in a house in the suburbs of some north-England town or City: the well-delineated family members are not human but magically animated life-size rag dolls, whose quiet existence is here seemingly endangered ...
Wainscot Societies
In The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, the term "wainscots" [see links below] denotes the common Fantasy trope of people or societies who live in the margins of a dominant civilization or the literal wainscots of its buildings. The classic fantasy example is The Borrowers (1952) by Mary Norton (1903-1992), televised as The Borrowers (1992 six episodes) and filmed as ...
Spider-Man 3
Film (2007). Columbia Pictures presents a Marvel Studios/Laura Ziskin production. Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Sam & Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent; story by Raimi & Raimi, based on the Marvel Comic by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Cast includes Elizabeth Banks, Thomas Haden Church, James Cromwell, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Topher Grace, Rosemary Harris, Bryce Dallas Howard, Tobey ...
Strete, Craig
(1950- ) US author – the suggestion has been bruited that Strete is the pseudonym of a Native American author of Cherokee birth who does not wish to reveal his real name, but this has not been confirmed. He has written as Strete and as by Sovereign Faulkner, and possibly under other names, by himself and in collaboration; at least forty of the eighty or more stories claimed for him must almost certainly be under unrevealed names. As Strete, he began publishing ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...