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Sunday 7 December 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.
Site updated on 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Minor, Wendell
(1944- ) US artist, author and illustrator, initially in association with Paul Bacon, whose concern and hands-on responsibility for typography he shares; his first covers date from 1968. The intensely enhanced Magic Realism of his work, much of it depicting rural America, has been influential from the 1970s. In contrast to the overdetermined populousness of the work of Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), his works ...
Finch, Sheila
(1935- ) UK-born author, in the USA from 1957, naturalized in 1965, who began publishing sf with "The Confession of Melakos" for Sou-wester in 1977; some of her early stories appeared as by Sheila Finch-Rayner. Her first novel, Infinity's Web (1985), complicatedly describes the lives of five versions of one protagonist who live in various Alternate Worlds, and who gradually gain a sense of the mutual web they ...
Shazam!
US juvenile tv series (1974-1976). Filmation Associates for CBS television. Directors included Hollingsworth Morse, Chuck Menville, Henry J Lange Jr and Robert Chenault. Writers included character creator C C Beck, Donald F Glut, Marianne Means and Olga Simms. Cast includes Jackson Bostwick, John Davey, Michael Gray and Les Tremayne. 28 30-minute episodes. Colour. / In this live-action series Billy Batson (Gray) is a teenager with the ability to ...
Morimi Tomihiko
(1979- ) Writing name of a Japanese author whose work bridges many trends in Japan, including concentrations on studied, commodified "cute", contemporary romance, postmodernism (see Postmodernism and SF) and the Media Landscape. / A master's graduate in Agriculture from Kyōto University, Morimi was first published while still a student, and continues to draw ...
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 ...