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
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Alternate World Recordings
US record label run by Shelley and Roy Torgeson, based in New York, active from 1975 to 1977. It concentrated entirely on spoken word albums of readings of sf and fantasy, and in its brief existence released an impressive roster of recordings by Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Ursula K Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, Joanna ...
Kirk, Pauline
(? - ) UK poet and author of The Keepers (1996), a Dystopia set in a Near Future UK run by the eponymous Keepers on lines mildly evocative of George Orwell's Nineteen Eight-Four (1949), with fairly rife regimentation and some brainwashing. But a dissident group imports a virus into the Keeper's central ...
Galactic Cowboys
US rock group who have returned repeatedly to sf themes in their music, often evoking motifs and venues found in sf Westerns. Their 1991 eponymous debut crashes and bashes through songs that use the Moon landing, including audio samples of Neil Armstrong, as a point of reference: particularly "Pump Up The Space Suit" and the ironically titled (given its raucously insistent heavy metal style) "Sea of Tranquillity". "Ranch on Mars" ...
Antieau, Kim
(1955- ) US author who began publishing fiction of genre interest with "Out of the Womb" in Asimov's for July 1983; her work brings together Feminist and Ecological concerns in tales, set generally in the American West, which themselves weave together fantasy and sf procedures (see Equipoise). The effect is heightened, sometimes over-emotional, politically ...
Lawnmower Man, The
Film (1992). Allied Vision Lane Pringle/Fuji Eight Co. Directed by Brett Leonard. Written by Leonard, Gimel Everett. Cast includes Pierce Brosnan, Jeff Fahey, Geoffrey Lewis and Jenny Wright. 108 minutes. Colour. / The full title is Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man, but the film has been repudiated by King, angry at the cynicism whereby his old short story "The Lawnmower Man" (May 1975 Cavalier) was purchased to ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star ...