SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 9 August 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 3 August 2026
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Strange World of Planet X, The
1. UK tv serial (1956). ATV. Produced by Arthur Lane. Directed by Quentin Lawrence. Teleplay René Ray. Cast includes Helen Cherry, Maudie Edwards, David Garth and William Lucas. Seven 25-minute episodes. Black and white. / Scientists discover a formula giving access to the fourth Dimension and, with others, are thereby transported to the abstractly arid Planet X. Ray novelized her own screenplay as ...
Moyer, J D
(? - ) US composer of electronic music and author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Beef" in Strange Horizons for May 2016. The Reclaimed Earth sequence beginning with The Sky Woman (2018) is set in a moderately distant Near Future after a complexly-caused set of Disasters, including one supervolcano, has devastated ...
Shuttle, Penelope
(1947- ) UK poet and author, married to Peter Redgrove (whom see for their sf collaborations) until his death in 2003. Jesusa (1971 chap) is an expressionist presentation of Sex seen as metamorphic, mythopoeic. Her only full-length solo fiction of genre interest, The Mirror of the Giant: A Ghost Story (1980), combines Feminist self-analysis with elements of ...
Port Iris
US low-paying downloadable Online Magazine produced by Casey Seda, Pendleton, South Carolina; quarterly from March 2010 to June 2011; 5 issues. Though close to being a Fanzine because a sizable portion of each of the first three issues covered local sf and fantasy Conventions, these were redeemed by including Interviews with the various Guests of Honour, including ...
Wagner, Jane
(1935- ) US stage director, screenwriter and author, best known for her work in collaboration with her wife the stand-up comedian and actor Lily Tomlin (1939- ); of their work together, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (first performed 1985; 1986), filmed as The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1991) (see Theatre), is of sf interest, in particular ...
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 ...