SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 26 October 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 19 October 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Weird Circle, The
Radio series (1943-1945), RCA Recording Services. Syndicated for the Mutual Broadcasting System and the NBC Red Radio Network. Staff writers included Peggy Mayer. Announcers/narrators: unknown. 79 30-minute episodes. / Primarily a Horror, mystery and suspense anthology series, The Weird Circle also offered some adaptations of early sf stories. These include The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket ...
Godfrey, Hollis
(1874-1936) US engineer, academic and author in whose sf novel, The Man Who Ended War (1908), the inventor of a radioactive metal-disintegrating Ray (an early nuclear weapon of sorts, though not the first in world literature; see Robert Cromie) threatens to destroy the world's warships from a secret location, one by one, if the great powers refuse to disarm. They initially resist and he carries out his threat, though the ...
Alligator
Film (1980). Alligator Associates/Group 1. Directed by Lewis Teague. Written by John Sayles, based on a story by Sayles and Frank Ray Perilli. Cast includes Robert Forster, Michael Gazzo, Dean Jagger and Robin Riker. 91 minutes cut to 89 minutes. Colour. / A pet baby alligator is flushed down a Los Angeles toilet (see California). Actualizing a familiar US Urban Legends, it or another ...
Freeling, Nicolas
Working name of UK author born Diamond Arthur Sigurd Partridge (1927-2003) but known for most of his life as Nicolas Davidson (under which name he married) or Nicolas Freeling; long resident in Europe. He is best known for the Van der Valk detective series, featuring Piet Van der Valk, Commissaris in the Amsterdam police; this character appeared in most of Freeling's earlier novels, though not in Gadget (1977), in which an abducted physicist is persuaded by his abductors to ...
Girl from Tomorrow, The
Australian tv series (1991-1992). Film Australia. Created by Mark Shirrefs, John Thomson and Kathy Mueller. Produced by Noel Price and Ron Saunders. Directors included Kathy Mueller and Noel Price. Writers included Mark Shirrefs and John Thomson. Cast included Andrew Clarke, Katherine Cullen, James Findlay, John Howard, Melissa Marshall and Helen O'Connor. 24 23-minute episodes. Colour. / This miniseries, aimed at a ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...