SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 24 June 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 23 June 2025
Sponsor of the day: Stuart Hopen
Beyond Fantasy & Science Fiction
UK Semiprozine published and edited by David A Riley, Parallel Universe Publications, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire. It was printed in A4 format on glossy paper but its overall appearance would fall short of being called Slick, although production values did improve over the three issues, which were dated April/May 1995, June/July 1995 and September/October 1995. It resembled, in its contents and artwork, ...
Pardoe, Blaine
(1962- ) US journalist, business executive and author associated almost exclusively with the Battletech Wargame, which gradually expanded from its physical base into a Computer Wargame; he has written Ties for both the central BattleTech sequence, beginning with BattleTech 18: Highlander Gambit (1995), and the connected ...
Computer Role Playing Game
Term used to describe a form of Videogame derived from pen and paper Role Playing Games. This entry only deals with the single player variant; the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, a related form in which many individuals share the same virtual world, is considered under Online Worlds. Computer Role Playing Games ...
Handley, Max
(1945-1990) UK scriptwriter and author known in the sf world only for Meanwhile (1977), an intricately comic Fabulation crammed to bursting point with devices from the whole spectrum of sf and fantasy (see Equipoise), from Clones to Mother Goddesses to anthropophagists, all introduced by a sharply knowledgeable hand. [JC]
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Film (1983). Dino De Laurentiis. Produced by Debra Hill, John Carpenter. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. Written by Wallace (but primarily by Nigel Kneale, uncredited). Cast includes Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin and Dan O'Herlihy. 98 minutes. Colour. / Not at all a true sequel to the "stalk and slash" Halloween films, this is a horror film with an sf rationale. Crazed Irish entrepreneur Cochran (O'Herlihy), ...
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 ...