SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 12 June 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 8 June 2026
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Hyams, Peter
(1943- ) US cinema director, producer and cinematographer, formerly a jazz drummer and television news anchorman; his first directed film of genre interest was Capricorn One (1977), which he also wrote: an exercise in Paranoia in which, with the unwise cooperation of NASA, a Mars mission is faked (Hyams is fond of government-based conspiracies). The next and perhaps his best is ...
Psychotic
US Fanzine, edited by Richard E Geis; begun 1953; after 20 issues retitled Science Fiction Review for three issues in 1955; then stopped publishing. Geis resumed it with Psychotic #21 in 1967, then again changed the title to Science Fiction Review from #28. It was by this time printing more serious reviews and Interviews, though its main feature remained Geis's amusing, rambling, ...
Jones, Langdon
(1942-2021) UK short-story author, editor and musician, strongly associated with New Worlds during its New-Wave period both as contributor – he published most of his sf stories there, beginning with "Stormwater Tunnel" in the July/August 1964 issue – and in various editorial capacities including assistant editor and (for four issues April-July 1969) editor. His most memorable work, most of it experimental in form and ...
Star Wars [franchise]
At the heart of this now very substantial enterprise is the Cinema sequence whose first instalment was Star Wars (1977). To the end of 2017, there have been nine Star Wars films. In 1997, before the release of the second, "prequel" trilogy, George Lucas re-released the original films into cinemas with updated special effects and minor story changes as "Special Editions". These changes were ...
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 ...