SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 14 March 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 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Dow, Alechia
(? - ) US author whose loose Young Adult Sound of Stars sequence beginning with The Sound of Stars (2020) is set in a Near Future world devastated by an accidental War between Homo sapiens and the Alien Ilori, whose Post-Holocaust Invasion of Earth ...
Attack Vector: Tactical
Cardboard models-based Wargame (2004). Ad Astra Games. Designed by Ken Burnside, Eric Finley, Tony Valle. / Attack Vector is a rare example of a game which, like Battlefleet Mars (1977) and Independence War: The Starship Simulator (1997), approaches space combat in a physically realistic way. Newtonian mechanics and accurate analyses of ...
Akira
Animated film (1988). Akira Committee. Directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo, from a screenplay by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on the graphic epic Akira (December 1982-June 1990 Young Magazine) by Otomo. Animation studio: Asahi. Chief animator: Takashi Nakamura. 124 minutes. Colour. / In its day Akira was the most successful attempt yet to transfer sophisticated, state-of-the-art Comic-book graphics to ...
Sherry, John Filmore
(1866-1894) Australian author of Phosphor: An Ischian Mystery (1888), a Lost Race tale in which a young eccentric, who has tested an antidote for snake venom by injecting himself with Poison and is then buried alive, discovers a world Underground inhabited by phosphorescent anthropoids whose queen boasts a human body and the head of an ape (see ...
Mother
Videogame series (from 1989). Nintendo. Designed by Shigesato Itoi. / Mother is a series of Japanese Console Role Playing Games (see Computer Role Playing Games), beginning with the three-dimensional Isometric view Mother (1989 Nintendo, NES) designed by Shigesato Itoi. This game, released only in Japan, follows the adventures of a young boy who travels ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...