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Saturday 5 September 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 31 August 2026
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Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Killer Klowns from Outer Space
US film (1988). Chiodo Bros. Directed by Stephen Chiodo. Written by Charles Chiodo and Stephen Chiodo. Cast includes Grant Cramer, Peter Licassi, John Allen Nelson, Michael S Siegel, Suzanne Snyder and John Vernon. 88 minutes. Colour. / Canoodling teenagers Mike Tobacco (Cramer) and Debbie Stone (Snyder) see a light fall from the sky; investigating, they find a circus tent (actually a Spaceship) in the middle of the forest. Entering, the pair observe ...
Lee, Mary Soon
(1965- ) UK-born author and poet with an MA in mathematics from Cambridge University; currently in the US as a naturalized citizen. She began to publish work of genre interest with "Gift" in Strange Days magazine for Fall 1992. Her first book-length publication was the fantasy collection Winter Shadows and Other Tales (coll 2001), followed by the sf collection Ebb Tides and Other Tales (coll 2002); the latter includes work first ...
Payn, James
(1830-1898) UK author and editor whose 100+ books cover a wide variety of genres, his sf being comparatively inconspicuous. The Cruise of the Anti-Torpedo (1871 chap) anonymous is a typical Future-War tale, one of many written in direct response to George T Chesney's The Battle of Dorking (May 1871 Blackwood's Magazine; 1871 chap) (see ...
Time Paradoxes
The fact that Time Travel into the past disrupts the pattern of causality, changing or cancelling matters of known fact, has not caused stories of this kind to be banished from the sf field; instead it has led to the growth of a subgenre of stories celebrating the peculiar aesthetics of such Paradoxes. The essential paradoxicality of time travel is often dramatized by asking: "What would happen if I went back in time and killed my own ...
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 ...