SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 15 September 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 14 September 2026
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Mecha
In this encyclopedia, a pilotable or remote-operable machine, often bipedal or otherwise humanoid in form, encompassing the city-stomping war machines of Anime and the Powered Armour suits of numerous sf shows. / Strictly speaking, the term mecha originates in Japanese from the English "mechanism", and refers to any form of machinery. A concentration on the workings or design of a particular machine is not uncommon in ...
Del Rey Books
US paperback imprint, founded 1977, a subsidiary of Ballantine Books, itself a part of Random House. The imprint was named by then-Ballantine editor Judy-Lynn del Rey for her husband Lester del Rey; the original Ballantine imprint is now little used for sf. Judy-Lynn, who died in 1986, was editor-in-chief and, from 1982, publisher; Lester, the very successful fantasy editor, retired ...
Hughes, Edward P
(? - ) US author – it has been speculated that he may be Welsh – who began publishing sf with "In the Name of the Father" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for September 1980, the first tale in his Liam McGrath sequence, which was continued in his first novel, The Long Mynd (1985), set in a Post-Holocaust world brought into being by ...
Wielka, większa i największa
["Great, Greater, and Greatest"] Polish film (1963; vt The Great Big World and Little Children). Directed by Anna Sokolowska. Written by Sokolowska and Jerzy Broszkiewicz , based on Broszkiewicz's Wielka, większa i największa (1960). Cast includes Bogusz Bilewski, Zofia Kucówna, Urszula Modrzynska, Bronislaw Pawlik, Wojciech Puzynski, Kinga Sienko, Mieczyslaw Stoor and Andrzej ...
Voyage à Travers l'Impossible, Le
Film (1904; vt Whirling the Worlds; vt An Impossible Voyage). Star. Produced and directed by Georges Méliès. 30 minutes. Black and white. / This was only the second sf-oriented film to be more than five minutes long – there had been several of around one minute – made by French cinema pioneer Méliès; the first was his Le Voyage dans la Lune ...
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 ...