SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 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: John Howard
Ladius
Japanese animated OVA (1987; original title Makyō Gaiden Le Deus; vt Le Deus). Ashi Productions Company. Directed by Hiroshi Negishi. Written by Hideki Sonoda. Voice cast includes Chie Kōjiro, Kazuki Yao, Norio Wakamoto, Toshimi Nakamura and Yūko Mizutani. 48 minutes. Colour. / Riot Genus (Kazuki), accompanied by twins Spica (Chie) and Seneca (Toshimi), is about to acquire an "ancient lens called the Eye of Zalem" from its ...
Levy, David
(1913-2000) US film executive and author in whose The Gods of Foxcroft (1970) the protagonist awakes from Suspended Animation to find the world of 500 years hence suffering under circumstances disastrous to the world's Ecology, forcing humans into cramped habitats; meanwhile, Aliens are observing us from space. [JC]
Whitney, Verner Meurice
(1893-1984) US author in whose The Unearthly Kingdom (1930), which is set in the moderately distant Near Future, the earth is ruled by a warlord from his Island fastness, almost certainly a re-arisen Atlantis. He maintains control through his monopoly over advanced Weapons of all sorts, including martial Robots, and is persuaded to apply ...
Morris, Jeffrey
(? - ) US producer, director, screenwriter and author whose production company FutureDude Entertainment (founded in 2010) has various genre projects. These include the forthcoming sf film «Persephone», directed by Morris and scripted by him with Kevin J Anderson, about the voyage of an interstellar ark-Starship carrying ten thousand colonists in ...
Slam Bang Comics
US Comic (1940). Fawcett Publications Inc. 7 issues. Artists include Jack Binder, Gus Ricca, Hal Sharp and Mike Suchorsky. Scriptwriters include Jack Cole, Mort Weisinger and apparently Manly Wade Wellman (see below). 68 pages, with seven long strips and a short text story each issue; plus short gag, fiction or non-fiction pieces as filler. The strips feature a ...
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 ...