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Tuesday 24 June 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.
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Bertram, Noel
Pseudonym of Noel Boston (1910-1966), and not, as has often been thought, of his friend R L Fanthorpe. Bertram privately published some supernatural stories as Yesterday Knocks (coll 1953; exp 2003 as Boston); his ten tales 1960-1962 in Supernatural Stories, the Badger Books magazine whose contents were mostly written by Fanthorpe, have been verified. [SH/DRL]
Agnew, Ewan
(1893-1930) UK politician and playwright who was in active service during World War One, and who may have been blackballed from The Reform Club by E M Forster, but seems otherwise unnoted. In his sf play, The Shingling of Jupiter: A Fantastic Play for Serious People in Three Acts (1924 chap), Major Smith, a Mysterious Stranger from the eponymous planet who is on a spying ...
Luca de Tena, Torcuato
(1923-1999) Spanish controversialist, poet and author in whose first novel, La otra vida del capitán Contreras (1953; trans Barnaby Conrad as The Second Life of Captain Contreras 1960), the Sleeper Awakes hero has sharp things to say about the new world he enters. [JC]
Lockout
Film (2012). EuropaCorp/Open Road Films. Directed by James Mather and Stephen St Leger. Written by Mather, St Leger and Luc {Besson}. Cast includes Joseph Gilgun, Maggie Grace and Guy Pearce. 91 minutes. Colour. / The film optimistically boasts that it is based on an original idea by Besson, but there is not a single fresh thought in this morass of Clichés. Snow (the usually impressive Pearce, apparently taking a holiday from acting to wallow in ...
Woolf, Maud
(? - ) Scottish author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Stranding" in Metaphorosis Magazine for June 2021. In her first novel, the Near Future Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock (2024), it is possible to create entirely convincing Clones of oneself. The eponymous celebrity at the heart of the tale, after producing twelve, soon finds that the ...
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 ...