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Wednesday 11 February 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 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Day the Earth Caught Fire, The
Film (1961). British Lion/Pax/Universal. Produced and directed by Val Guest. Cast includes Arthur Christiansen, Edward Judd, Leo McKern and Janet Munro. Written by Wolf Mankowitz, Guest. 99 minutes, cut to 90 minutes (US). Black and white. / Val Guest, who had made The Quatermass Xperiment (1956) and other sf/horror films for Hammer in the 1950s, excelled himself with this intelligent Disaster ...
Prosser, Jordan
(1988- ) Australian filmmaker, performing musician and author of sf interest for his first novel, the Near Future Big Time (2024), set in a balkanized Australia whose populous eastern regions, now known as the Federal Republic of East Australia, have doubled-down on that continent's uneasily boastful past and the rigid prurience of its sexual mores. The protagonist, a compromised bass player for a group known as the ...
Herscholt, Wolfe
An Australian pseudonym or more likely a House Name used mainly by G C Bleeck and Russell Hausfeld on some unremarkable Scientific Thrillers titles, two of them of novella length. These are Magnetic Peril (1949 chap) and X-Ray Menace (1949 chap), both involving Inventions; in the first a new metal is used to magnetically attract ocean liners (see ...
Spider-Man 2
Film (2004). Columbia Pictures presents a Marvel Enterprises/Laura Ziskin production. Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Alvin Sargent, based on the Marvel Comic book by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko. Cast includes Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Tobey Maguire and Alfred Molina. 127 minutes. Colour. / Spider-Man 2, Raimi's idiosyncratic sequel, sees Peter Parker (Maguire) deal with the problems ...
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 ...