SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 23 September 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 18 September 2023
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Space Warp
In sf Terminology, a concept similar to that of hyperspace and subspace. The term (along with "hyperspace") may first have been used by John W Campbell Jr in Islands of Space (Spring 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly; 1957). If a handkerchief is folded, two otherwise separated points of it can become adjacent; if space – more accurately, space/time – could ...
Small Wonder
US tv series (1985-1989). Metromedia Productions, 20th Century Fox Television. Syndicated. Produced by Howard Leeds, Budd Grossman, Jean Hester, Bruce Taylor. Directors included Peter Baldwin, Linda Day, Leslie H Martinson. Writers included Dick Christie, Donald Ross, David Silverman. Cast includes William Bogart, Tiffany Brissette, Dick Christie, Alice Ghostley, Edie McClurg (first season only), Marla Pennington, Emily Schulman and Jerry Suprian. 96 30-minute episodes. Colour. / ...
Terminator Genisys
Film (2015). Paramount Pictures/Skydance Productions. Directed by Alan Taylor. Written by Laeta Kalogridis, Patrick Lussler. Cast includes Wayne Bastrup, Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke, Jai Courtney, Byung-hun Lee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, J K Simmons. 125 minutes. Colour. / Terminator Genisys is a remake/reboot of The Terminator (1984), which initiated the original Terminator sequence, plus ...
Prisons
Scenarios of future Crime and Punishment frequently include prison facilities, ranging from mild extrapolation of present-day institutions to highly exotic variants from which escape is theoretically impossible but nevertheless often takes place. Influential nonfantastic precursors of sf prisons, featuring just such more or less remarkable breakouts, include the real-world, Island-based Château d'If of Alexandre ...
Billy the Kid
Pseudonym of American cowboy and outlaw William H Bonney (1859-1881), who was probably born Henry McCarty, becoming Bonney for unknown reasons in 1877, perhaps because his mother remarried, or to dodge arrest; a thief who shot other men in the back. He was also involved in range wars, and possibly originally cast in heroic roles because he featured in situations which – in terms of the cauldron of story of the Western, which was just beginning to boil – ...
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 ...