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Saturday 15 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 10 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Last Starfighter, The
Film (1984). Lorimar/Universal. Directed by Nick Castle. Written by Jonathan Betuel. Cast includes Lance Guest, Dan O'Herlihy, Robert Preston, Norman Snow and Catherine Mary Stewart. 101 minutes. Colour. / In this cheerful, derivative wish-fulfilment story, Alex (Guest), who lives in a trailer park, is a teenage whiz at computer arcade games. Attaining the highest-ever score on the Starfighter game, he is conscripted (though at first refusing) by its inventor, an alien ...
Women of the Prehistoric Planet
US film (1966). Standard Club of California Productions. Directed and written by Arthur C Pierce. Cast includes Wendell Corey, Bob Ito, Keith Larsen and Irene Tsu. 87 minutes. Colour. / The Spaceships Cosmos One, Two and Three are returning to their home world after visiting Centaurus, some of whose inhabitants are passengers; but two of the Centaurians now hijack Cosmos Three and demand to be returned to Centaurus, ...
Mitchell, Nicole
(1967- ) US flautist and composer, a member and past chair of Chicago's influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). As with many members of that organization, her prolific body of work bridges jazz, improvisation and classical composition. Her first sf-related works were a trilogy inspired by the writings of Octavia E Butler, all credited to Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble: Xenogenesis Suite ...
Mechte Navstrechu
["Meeting a Dream Halfway"] Film (1963; vt A Dream Come True; vt Encounter in Space). Odessa Studios. Directed by Mikhail Karzhukov and Otar Koberidze. Written by Mikhail Karzhukov and Otar Koberidze, based on a draft screenplay by A Berdnik and Ivan Bondin. Cast includes Boris Borisenko, A Genesin, Larisa Gordeichik, Peeter Kard, Otar Koberidze, T Pochepa, Nikolai Timofeyev and Nikolai Volkov. 64 minutes. Colour. / On a Utopian future Earth, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...