SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 10 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Davies, Tom
Working name of UK author Melvyn Thomas Davies (1941-2024), in whose Near Future Satire of a decaying UK, The Electric Harvest (1984), Keith Richards – sole surviving member of The Rolling Stones as the Millennium approaches – attempts to buy Windsor Castle; snuff shows infiltrate the television networks, public floggings have become popular; and the media collaborate in ...
Loch Ness Monster
Scotland's mythical Loch Ness Monster – so called since 1933 and gaining international fame soon after, is generally explained in sf as a surviving aquatic Dinosaur or dinosaur colony, as in William J Makin's "The Monster of the Loch" (20 January-3 March 1934 Pearson's Weekly) with Leslie Arliss (1901-1987); Leslie ...
Bredenberg, Jeff
(1953-2010) US author known in the sf field primarily for his Dream Compass sequence of Post-Holocaust novels, comprising The Dream Compass (1991) and The Dream Vessel (1992). Though the venue is not innovatory – in a continent named Merqua [ie America], a geriatric "Monitor" attempts to stifle the young, who wish to be permitted to read again; and a rebel band escapes to a more enlightened ...
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers
Japanese animated online tv series (2023). Studio DEEN. Based on the Manga Ōoku (2004-2020; vt Ooku: The Inner Chambers) by Fumi Yoshinaga. Directed by Noriyuki Abe. Written by Rika Takasugi. Voice cast includes Kikuko Inoue, Sanae Kobayashi, Hitoshi Kubota, Eriko Matsui, Mamoru Miyano, Tomokazu Seki and Setsuji Satoh. Ten episodes: the first is 80 minutes, the rest circa 25 minutes. Colour. / In ...
Irwin, Robert
(1946-2024) UK academic, mediaevalist, professional juggler (briefly) and author whose work in Arabian studies, of importance in itself, underpins the world envisioned in his first and most famous novel, The Arabian Nightmare (1983; rev 1987), which may be the definitive rendering of its central conceit: a mise en abyme-like dream narrative whose protagonist, upon seeming to awaken, only finds himself passing out of one story through a Portal into a deeper dream [for ...
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 ...