SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 11 September 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 7 September 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Dead Kids
Film (1981; vt Strange Behavior). Endeavour/Bannon Glenn/Hemdale. Directed by Michael Laughlin. Written by Laughlin, William Condon. Cast includes Arthur Dignam, Louise Fletcher, Fiona Lewis, Michael Murphy and Dan Shor. 99 minutes, cut to 93 minutes. Colour. / This Australian/New Zealand exploitation sf/Horror movie is set in the US Midwest and has a largely US cast, but was actually shot in New Zealand. It is the first of a projected trilogy ...
Bigly, Cantell A
Pseudonym of US author George Washington Peck (1817-1859), author of a travel book, Melbourne, and the Chincha Islands; With Sketches of Lima, and a Voyage Round the World (1854) under his own name. His novel as Bigly, Aurifodina; Or, Adventures in the Gold Region (1849; vt Aurifodina; Or, Adventures in the Gold Region: A Fantastical '49er Novel 1974), is a Lost Race Satire set in an unknown ...
Gloss, Molly
(1944- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Joining" (June 1984 F&SF); much of her later fiction comprises historical novels set in her native Oregon, and her first book – Outside the Gates (1986), a Young Adult fantasy – is also set in a world both mountainous and pastoral. Her first sf novel, The Dazzle of Day (1997), is set mostly in a ...
Zinovii, Niko
(? - ) US publisher and author whose sf novel, The God Antenna (2012), is set in a Near Future world facing the challenges of First Contact and the associated problem of coping with a pill (see Drugs) that homes in on the part of the human brain that causes Religion and deletes it. [JC]
Tomkins, Deborah
(? - ) UK author, active from 2007 or earlier, most of her early work being short fiction. She is of sf interest for her first book, the novella Aerth (2025), set with a didactic serenity evocative of Ursula K Le Guin on two contrasting planets, which may be seen as housing Alternate World futures of Earth, or as worlds existing in parallel universes (see ...
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 ...