SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 14 March 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 9 March 2026
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Something Else
UK Semiprozine, three issues (Spring 1980, Winter 1980, Spring 1984), A4 format, published and edited by Charles Partington from Manchester. Print run was between 1000 and 1500 copies. This was a short-lived but brave attempt by Partington, who had previously edited Alien Worlds, to continue the New Worlds tradition. Many of the stalwarts of ...
Loudon, Jane Webb
(1800-1858) UK author of books on popular natural history and gardening, and of The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827 3vols; rev 1828), published anonymously, like Mary Shelley, and also when she was relatively young, though not in her teens. Her birth year is almost certainly 1800 (as given here from 2022) not 1807, the earlier date having been established through research by Nickianne Moody, Andy ...
Flagg, Francis
Pseudonym of Canadian-born author Henry George Weiss (1898-1946), in the US from 1919, whose birth name has also been wrongly given as George Henry Weiss; the pseudonym was adopted in memory of Francis Flagg Weiss – his brother, according to Forrest J Ackerman – who died in 1922. A US resident, Flagg began publishing sf with "The Machine Man of Ardathia" in Amazing for November 1927, part of the short Ardathia ...
Psycho-Pass
Japanese animated tv series (2012-2013). Production I.G. Directed by Katsuyuki Motohiro and Naoyoshi Shiotani. Written by Makoto Fukami and Gen Urobuchi. Voice cast includes Kana Hanazawa, Kenji Nojima, Takahiro Sakurai and Tomokazu Seki. 22 23-minute episodes. Colour. / Twenty-second-century Japan is stable, prosperous and has created the "greatest happiness for the greatest number of people" (see Utopia). This is done through ...
Salterberg, B J
(1934- ) US author of The Outlander: Captivity (1989), the powerful first volume of a trilogy that seems unlikely now to be completed. In a Ruined Earth environment, a matriarchal society attempts to survive assaults from a nearby patriarchal society based on agonistic martial behaviour. Interestingly, in its treatment of men under their control, the matriarchy mirrors "normal" male prejudices against women. The clear ...
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 ...