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Tuesday 24 June 2025
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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Phantom Creeps, The
US Serial Film (1939). Universal Pictures. Directed by Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind. Written by Basil Dickey and George Plympton, based on a story by Wyllis Cooper. Cast includes Dorothy Arnold, Robert Kent, Bela Lugosi, Jack C. Smith, Edwin Stanley Regis Toomey and Ed Wolff. Twelve circa 21-minute instalments. Black and white. / "Mad Scientist" Dr. Alex Zorka (Lugosi) ...
Rogers, John Rankin
(1838-1901) US politician (Governor of Washington 1897-1901) and author of The Graftons; Or, Looking Forward: A Story of Pioneer Life (1893; vt Looking Forward: The Story of an American Farm 1898), a Utopia structured as a reflection upon Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888). [JC]
Klass, David
(1960- ) US screenwriter and author, son of occasional sf short story writer Morton Klass (1927-2001), nephew of Philip Klass (William Tenn) and brother of Judy Klass, who began publishing short fiction with "Ringtoss" for Seventeen in 1978. Of his fiction, much of which has been written for Young Adult readers, the Caretaker sequence – comprising ...
Dunn, Katherine
(1945-2016) US author, teacher and radio personality whose third novel, Geek Love (1989), is a densely told tale of a family which breeds its own circus freaks through a kind of Genetic Engineering; in the end the book reads, however, not primarily as sf (see Equipoise), but as an extremely expert Fabulation on the primordial theme of the family romance. Dunn's novel should not be ...
Mikes, George
(1912-1987) Hungarian author born Mikes György, in UK from 1938, naturalized 1946. He was a successful journalist in Hungary from 1933, and came to the UK in his professional capacity, remaining in London because, as he was Jewish, it would have been suicide to return. His work is various, mostly nonfiction, often slyly comical; his only work of any sf interest is Down With Everybody!: A Cautionary Tale for Children Over Twenty-One, and Other Stories (coll 1951), which spoofs ...
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 ...