SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 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 7 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Battleship
Film (2012). Universal Pictures presents in association with Hasbro a Bluegrass Films and Film 44 production. Directed by Peter Berg. Written by Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber. Cast includes Tadanobu Asano, Brooklyn Decker, Taylor Kitsch, Rihanna and Alexander Skarsgård. 131 minutes. Colour. / Toy manufacturer Hasbro here tries to replicate the success of its toys-to-film Transformers franchise by wedding ...
Fringeworthy
Role Playing Game (1982). Tri Tac Games. Designed by Richard Tucholka. / Along with the board and counter Wargame Down Styphon! (1977 Fantasy Games Unlimited) designed by Mike Gilbert (based on H Beam Piper's novel Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen [fixup 1965; vt Gunpowder God 1978]), Fringeworthy was one of the earliest games to be set on ...
Butler, Ewan
(1911-1974) UK journalist (The Times, Daily Mail) and author, son of Sir Harold Butler, a politician who founded the International Labour Office in Geneva; educated at Eton; served in World War Two. In his supernatural thriller, "Talk of the Devil" (1948), the Devil visits England with foul consequences. Of sf interest is his Hitler Wins tale, ...
Drayton, Henry S
(1840-1923) US medical doctor and author whose Lost World novel, In Oudemon: Reminiscences of an Unknown People, by an Occasional Traveler (1900), features a 100-year-old English colony within a beneath South America, which is technologically advanced, telepathic, socialist and Christian. [JC]
Ferriss, Lucy
(1954- ) US author whose work – mostly nonfantastic – tends to explore personal and political issues with intimate intensity, and whose fourth novel, The Misconceiver (1997), is a Near Future examination of a Dystopian world ruled by a Christian "Coalition" in which abortions – now known as "misconceptions" – have become illegal. [JC]
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 ...