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Saturday 8 August 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 3 August 2026
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Valtat, Jean-Christophe
(1968- ) French academic and author, active from the early 1990s. No fantastic content is clearly inferrable from 03: Roman (2005; trans Mitzi Angel 2010); but the Mysteries of New Venice Steampunk sequence, comprising Aurorarama (2010) and Luminous Chaos: Book Two in the Mysteries of New Venice Series (2013), unpacks a sophisticated narrative placed in an ...
Starfall
Role Playing Game (2015). Wordplay Games. Written by Paul Mitchener, based on the Wordplay game system by Graham Spearing. / Small Press Horror in SF roleplaying game that mines the transition of the gritty, pessimistic tenor (see Optimism and Pessimism) of the UK-specific ...
Conroy, Robert
(1938-2014) US author of several Alternate History novels beginning with 1901 (1995), which features a German Invasion of Long Island, intimately threatening New York – but Teddy Roosevelt leads the successful resistance. In 1862 (2006), the United Kingdom allies itself with the Confederate States in the American Civil War after the North has foolishly violated ...
Incredible Melting Man, The
Film (1977). Quartet Productions, American International Pictures. Written and directed by William Sachs. Additional dialogue Rebecca Ross. Cast includes Michael Aldredge, Burr DeBenning, Alex Rebar and Ann Sweeny. 84 minutes. Colour. / By 1977 the idea of an astronaut returning to Earth after being contaminated by some dread space infection or irradiation was well and truly a Clichéd subgenre of ...
Wyndham, John
That portion of his full name used by UK author John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (?1903-1969) after World War Two, and by far his best-known byline; before World War Two, he had published work as John Beynon Harris, John Beynon, Wyndham Parkes, Lucas Parkes and Johnson Harris. As well as changing names with frequency, and, according to an intensely argued speculation by David Ketterer, obscuring the fact that he was born out of wedlock precisely a year ...
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 ...