SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 10 November 2025
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 4 November 2025
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Watkins, Peter
(1935-2025) UK Television and film director, active as a maker of documentary films from 1959. He was one of the pioneers of the technique of staging historical or imaginary events as if they were contemporary and undergoing television-news coverage, making his reputation with two quasidocumentaries or "docudramas" for BBC TV: Culloden (1964), in which participants at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 are interviewed by modern journalists; and ...
Sheldon, Roy
UK House Name used by Hamilton & Co. (which published Panther Books) on short fiction and full-length novels in Authentic Science Fiction 1951-1952 and on a number of routine sf novels 1952-1954 by H J Campbell and E C Tubb. George Hay – included in the above list in the second edition of this encyclopedia – ...
Spindizzy
In its day, one of the best-loved items of sf Terminology. The spindizzy is the Antigravity Invention used to drive flying Cities through the Galaxy at Faster-than-Light speeds in James Blish's Okie series. This was collected as Cities in Flight (omni 1970), though Blish was using the ...
Mysterious Island, The
US film (1929). Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Directed by Benjamin Christensen, Lucien Hubbard and Maurice Tourneur; underwater sequences directed by J Ernest Williamson. Written by Lucien Hubbard, loosely based on the works of Jules Verne. Cast includes Lionel Barrymore, Jacqueline Gadsden, Lloyd Hughes and Montagu Love. 95 minutes. Originally predominantly two-colour Technicolor, but apparently only black and white copies survive [see American Film Institute ...
You Only Live Twice
Film (1967). Eon/United Artists. Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Written by Roald Dahl, based very loosely on You Only Live Twice (1964) by Ian Fleming. Cast includes Sean Connery, Mie Hama, Donald Pleasence, Tetsuro Tamba and Akiko Wakabayashi. 116 minutes. Colour. / Several of Fleming's James Bond novels were Technothrillers, mildly sf-oriented (though set in the ...
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 ...