SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 14 May 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 12 May 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Doomsday Machine
Film (1972; vt Escape from Planet Earth). First Leisure/Cine-Find. Produced by Harry Hope. Directed by Herbert J Leder, Hope and Lee Sholem. Written by Stuart J Byrne from his original story. Special effects partially by David L Hewitt. Cast includes Ruta Lee, Denny Miller, Mala Powers, Lori Scott, unknown, Bobby Van, Henry Wilcoxon and Grant Williams. 83 minutes. Colour. / Project Astra is a two-year ...
Heat Vision and Jack
US tv pilot (1999). The Greenblatt Janollari Studio, Red Hour Productions. Directed by Ben Stiller. Created and written by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, Cast includes Jack Black, Ron Silver and Owen Wilson. One 30-minute episode. Colour. / A television pilot that was never picked up for a series. In the introduction Stiller, clutching his Emmy, declares that he has "returned to television a wealthy and powerful man ... [so] as a person you admire, I'm giving you permission to appreciate ...
Scientists
Scientists in pre-twentieth-century sf often exhibited symptoms of social maladjustment, sometimes to the point of insanity; they were characteristically obsessive and antisocial. Some scientists were quasidiabolical figures, like Coppelius in E T A Hoffmann's "Der Sandmann" ["The Sandman"] (comprising volume one of Nachtstücke, 1816) or Mary Shelley's eponymous ...
Chang Shi-Kuo
(1944- ) Chinese author and lecturer in computer science (see Computers), in Taiwan from circa 1949, in the USA from 1966 and a long-standing professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Chang was the founding editor of the academic journals Visual Languages & Computing and Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering, co-editor of Distance Education Technologies, and effectively ...
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 (1966-1967), and later in ...