SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 April 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 13 April 2026
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
By Dawn's Early Light
US made-for-tv film (1990). HBO Original Films. Directed by Jack Sholder. Written by Bruce Gilbert from the novel Trinity's Child (1983) by William Prochnau. Cast includes Powers Boothe, Rebecca De Mornay (as Rebecca DeMornay), James Earl Jones, Martin Landau, Darren McGavin and Rip Torn. 100 minutes. Colour. / This was one of the last nuclear-war films of the Cold War era, and deals with an ...
Williams, Islwyn
(1915-1988) Welsh author who produced two sf novels remembered longer in Italy than in the UK. Dangerous Waters (1952) showed British World War Two heroes defending the realm against a new enemy from Under the Sea off Pembrokeshire, and was one of the better 1950s green-skinned-invader yarns (admittedly, the competition included Kathleen Lindsay's sf as by Nigel Mackenzie). ...
Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone
Film (1983). Delphi Productions/Columbia. Directed by Lamont Johnson. Written by David Preston, Edith Rey, Dan Goldberg, Len Blum, from a story by Stewart Harding, Jean Lafleur. Cast includes Ernie Hudson, Michael Ironside, Molly Ringwald and Peter Strauss. 90 minutes (but reported as being originally 105 minutes). Made in 3D. Colour. / Bedevilled with production problems, changing directors in midstream (it was begun by Jean Lafleur), suffering from the ominous stigma of six ...
Star Trek: The Next Generation
US tv series (1987-1994). Paramount. Series creator/executive producer Gene Roddenberry. Co-executive producers Rick Berman, Michael Piller and later Jeri Taylor. Supervising producers include Maurice Hurley and Michael Wagner. Directors include Corey Allen, Gabrielle Beaumont, Cliff Bole, Rob Bowman, LeVar Burton, David Carson, Richard Colla, Jonathan Frakes, Winrich Kolbe, Les Landau, Paul Lynch, Gates McFadden, ...
Lighthall, W D
(1857-1954) Canadian politician, lawyer and author, of whose several novels The Master of Life: A Romance of the Five Nations and of Prehistoric Montreal (1908) is of some sf interest for its argument that the historical sixteenth-century (or earlier) creation of the Five Nations – a grouping of Native American cultures, also known as the Iroquois League – was inspired by an earlier nation-forming culture now so obscure that it constitutes a ...
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 ...