SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 17 January 2025
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 13 January 2025
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Bensen, D R
(1927-1997) US editor and author, his novels being usually pseudonymous. The two anthologies he has edited, The Unknown: 11 Stories (anth 1963) and The Unknown Five (anth 1964), are both fantasy and (all but one story) compiled from Unknown. He was more important within the sf field for his editorship of Pyramid Books 1957-1967, a period during which that firm became a significant producer of sf novels in ...
Voyage sur Jupiter, Le
Film (1909; vt A Trip to Jupiter). Pathé Frères. Directed and written by Segundo de Chomón. Cast unidentified. 8 minutes. Tinted. / This short silent film has sometimes been incorrectly attributed to Georges Méliès and given the title Dreams of an Astronomer; the confusion is understandable, since writer-director de Chomón's film is very similar in its ...
Johnston, William
(1924-2010) US author, journalist and disk jockey who served in the US Navy Air Corps during World War Two, whose work consists primarily though not exclusively of Ties to various media productions; he wrote more than a hundred such novelizations and original tied novels, beginning to publish work of genre interest with the well-received Get Smart! (1965) and eight further ties to the Television "spy-fi" spoof ...
Skidmore, Joseph W
(1890-1938) US author usually considered as producing the worst-written material published in the SF Magazines, though he had some stiff competition. His first story was "Dramatis Personae" (Fall 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly), where the last two survivors of the human race try to start new life an on alien world. Skidmore was best known, or at least most notorious, for his Posi and Nega series, which is the ...
Frankenweenie
1. Short film (1984). Walt Disney Pictures (see The Walt Disney Company). Directed by Tim Burton. Written by Lenny Ripps, from Burton's outline. Cast includes Paul Bartel, Shelley Duvall, Barret Oliver and Daniel Stern. 30 minutes. Black and white. / Victor Frankenstein (Oliver), a ten-year-old amateur filmmaker in a picket-fence neighbourhood, brings his dead dog back to life with the power of electricity; ...
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 ...