SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 20 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.
Site updated on 18 February 2026
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Takei, George
(1937- ) US actor and author, best known for his role as Mr Sulu in the original Star Trek. Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe (1979) with Robert Lynn Asprin places a Japanese mercenary and ninja in a free-for-all Near Future corporate world. To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek's Mr. Sulu (1994), though focusing on the ...
Cult Movies & Video
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed on cheap newsprint. Publisher: Wack "O" Publishing. Associate Editor: Jan Henderson. 41 issues, 1990 to 2004. Publication schedule was generally quarterly. / A Semiprozine which gained considerable bookshop distribution in the US during the 1990s, this was largely concerned with vintage films and personalities associated with Fantasy, sf and ...
Tilley, Patrick
(1928-2020) UK author who initially studied art at the University of Durham and worked as a graphic designer 1955-1968, then as a film scriptwriter. His first sf novel, Fade-Out (1975; exp 1977), after the fashion of borderline works like Fail-Safe (13-27 October 1962 Saturday Evening Post; 1962) by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, concentrates ...
Haunted Hotel
US animated tv series (2025-current). Titmouse, Harmonius Claptrap, Magic Giraffe, Netflix Animation. Created by Matt Roller. Directors include Christopher Nance, Bob Suarez and Meg Waldow. Writers include Matt Roller. Voice cast includes Eliza Coupe, Will Forte, Skyler Gisondo, Natalie Palamides and Jimmi Simpson. Ten 25 minute episodes to date. Colour. / Katherine Freeling (Coupe) inherits the Undervale Hotel from her recently deceased brother Nathan (Forte), who won it in a card ...
Prehistoric SF
The late nineteenth-century growth of interest in primal humanity and its forebears (see Anthropology; Apes as Human; Evolution; Origin of Man) led to a broad category of imaginative fiction that might be termed Prehistoric Romance – colourful tales of primitives, freed even from the contemporary Lost-Race story's modest ...
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 ...