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Tuesday 8 July 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 7 July 2025
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Blur
UK indie band formed in 1989 by Damon Albarn (1968- ), Graham Coxon (1969- ), Alex James (1968- ) and Dave Rowntree (1964- ). Their first album, Leisure (1991), was an echo of dying genres from the Eighties but their next three albums would come to define the Britpop movement of the 1990s. Lyrically, singer Albarn was primarily known during this period as a social satirist (see ...
Pacific Rim
American film (2013). Warner Brothers/Legendary Pictures. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Written by Travis Beacham and del Toro, based on a story by Beacham. Cast includes Charlie Day, Idris Elba, Burn Gorman, Charlie Hunnam, Robert Kazinsky, Rinko Kikuchi, Max Martini and Ron Perlman. 131 minutes. Colour. / As a prelude to their colonization of Earth, Aliens from another Dimension have ...
Alarcón y Ariza, Pedro Antonio de
(1833-1891) Spanish author, initially famous for travel writings, though now know mainly as the author of El sombrero de tres picos (1874; trans anon as The Three-Cornered Hat 1891), a novella based on a traditional ballad which became famous after Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) composed a ballet in 1919 based on the tale. Alarcón is of some sf interest for his early novel, "El amigo de la muerte" (1852 El eco de occidente; trans Mrs Francis J A Darr as ...
Smith, Mitchell
(1935- ) US author who has also written Westerns as by Roy LeBeau; in his early career he was best-known for crime novels, of which Reprisal (1999) is of some interest, hinting at Horror in SF. Of sf interest is his later Snowfall sequence comprising Snowfall (2002), Kingdom River (2003) and Moonrise (2004), set in a ...
Brooks, Max
(1972- ) US scriptwriter and author who became known as a writer for Saturday Night Live in 2001-2003; his The Zombie Survival Guide (2003) – a nonfiction Satire of survivalist tracts, containing "documentary" scenarios based on Zombie attacks from pre-history to the present – is as engaging as its title. He is best known for World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...