SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 8 February 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.
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Hall, Rodney
(1935- ) UK-born poet, musician, editor and author, in Australia from 1949, active as a poet from around 1962; Chairperson 1991-1994 of the Australia Council, a body responsible for government arts policy and funding. Several of his novels contain fantasy elements. In Just Relations (1982), for instance, the metaphorical Suspended Animation of the cast approaches the literal. The Yandilli Trilogy, comprising ...
Littlefield, Sophie
(? - ) US author of several crime novels; some of her Young Adult books – like the Banished sequence comprising Banished (2010) and Unforsaken (2011) – are paranormal romances. Of sf interest is the complicatedly Equipoisal Aftertime sequence, comprising Aftertime (2011), Survivors (2011 ebook), Rebirth ...
Arachnophobia
Film (1990). Hollywood Pictures (see The Walt Disney Company), Amblin, Tangled Web. Executive producers Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall. Directed by Marshall. Written by Don Jakoby, Wesley Strick, from a story by Jakoby and Al Williams. Cast includes Jeff Daniels, John Goodman, Henry Jones, Harley Jane Kozak and Julian Sands. 109 minutes. Colour. / Frank Marshall, a longtime colleague of Spielberg as a ...
Cowboys & Aliens
Film (2011). Dreamworks Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Reliance Entertainment in association with Relativity Media present an Imagine Entertainment/KO Paper Products/Fairview Entertainment/Platinum Studios production. Directed by Jon Favreau. Written by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby; story by Fergus & Ostby and Steve Oedekerk, based on Cowboys and Aliens (graph 2006) by Scott ...
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 ...