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Thursday 1 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.
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May, Peter
(1951-2026) Scottish journalist, screenwriter and author, active from around 1970; resident in France from around 2000. During the first twenty-five years of his career as a screenwriter, he was involved in something like 1,000 television productions, all seemingly nonfantastic. He began to publish fiction with The Reporter (1978), which he serialized for the BBC; most of his later novels were crime thrillers, including the China Thrillers beginning with ...
Excretion
The elimination of liquid and solid human waste was at one time in sf, as in other genres, a generally Taboo subject; the thorough subject indexes to E F Bleiler's Science-Fiction: the Early Years (1990) and Bleiler's and Richard Bleiler's Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1999) contain no mention of bathrooms, toilets, urination or defecation, indicating both ...
Pronzini, Bill
Working name of US author William John Pronzini (1943- ), married to Marcia Muller; prolific and admired in several genres, notably crime fiction, since his first book, The Stalker (1971). He has published some very effective Horror, including Masques: A Novel of Terror (1981), and several other novels including Night Screams (1979) and Prose Bowl ...
Moon and Back, The
US film (2022; some sources say 2023). Lionsgate. Directed by Leah Bleich. Written by Bleich. Cast includes P J Byrne, Nat Faxon, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Molly Jackson, Taiv Lee, Isabel May, Roman Michael and Missi Pyle. 74 minutes. Colour. / This is a film of associational interest because it depicts the making of an amateur sf film. Teenager Lydia Gilbert (May) is distraught and moody following the death of her father Peter Gilbert (Faxon), but she discovers in her father's ...
Offin, T W
(1834-1913) UK author of How the Germans Took London: Forewarned, Forearmed (1900 chap), a late contribution to the Battle of Dorking subgenre of Future War tales hinging on the Invasion of an unprepared Britain. Mrs Grundy's Zoo: A Political Play (1908 chap) is a Satirical sketch. [JC]
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...