SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 July 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 20 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Replicant
Film (2001). Millennium Films Inc/Artisan Entertainment/777 Films Corporation. Directed by Ringo Lam. Written by Lawrence David Riggins and Les Weldon. Cast includes Michael Rooker and Jean-Claude Van Damme. 96 minutes. Colour. / A sadistic thriller with sf trappings, Replicant stars Van Damme – a renowned performer in martial-arts films – in a dual role as a woman-loathing serial killer and a "replicant" (see Clones) made from his DNA. ...
Kyne, Peter B
(1880-1957) US author, many of whose stories – at least 110 are credited – were made into films, including his first and most famous novel, The Three Godfathers (1913). Though it only hints at Near Future events, Pride of Palomar (1921) – filmed as The Pride of Palomar (1922) – is of interest for its portrayal of the Yellow Peril menace to ...
Riley, Brett
(1970- ) US teacher and author whose first novel Comanche (2020), is a Western involving the century-old ghost of a gunslinger. His sf tale, Lord of Order (2021), set in a post-Technology Ruined Earth version of a balkanized America, confronts the "Lord of Order" of New Orleans with a crisis of survival. [JC]
Firestarter
Film (1984). Universal. Directed by Mark L Lester. Written by Stanley Mann, based on Firestarter (1980) by Stephen King. Cast includes Drew Barrymore, Freddie Jones, David Keith, Heather Locklear, George C Scott and Martin Sheen. 114 minutes. Colour. / The novel is not one of King's best, but it hardly deserved this messy adaptation. A young girl, Charlie (Barrymore), has pyrotic powers and can start fires by mental concentration alone. ...
Johnson, Owen
(1878-1952) US author in various genres, most of his work being Young Adult novels such as the Lawrenceville sequence, which focuses on school life; the best-known of these titles is The Varmint (1910). The protagonist of The Coming of the Amazons: A Satiristic Speculation on the Scientific Future of Civilization (1931) finds, on awakening in 2181 CE from Suspended Animation, that women ...
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 ...