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Sunday 7 December 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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Disch, Thomas M
(1940-2008) US author and poet, raised in Minnesota but for many years intermittently resident in New York where, before becoming a full-time writer in the mid-1960s, he worked in an advertising agency and in a bank; he subsequently lived (and set several tales) in the UK, Turkey, Italy and Mexico, before returning to Manhattan, where much of his significant work is set; he was the partner of Charles Naylor from 1969 until the latter's death in 2005. Disch ...
Tolman, Edward C
(1886-1959) US psychologist, a sometimes reluctant associate of B F Skinner, whose theories of behaviourism seemed excessively reductive; he is best known for his successful suit against the University of California for attempting to fire him because of his refusal to sign a McCarthy-era loyalty oath. His measured assessments of the relationship between Psychology and the course of history appear in Drives Toward War ...
Tank Girl: The Movie
Film (1995). United Artists Pictures presents a Trilogy Entertainment Group production. Directed by Rachel Talalay. Written by Tedi Sarafian, based on the Comic strip Tank Girl (1988-1995) in Deadline magazine, created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin and originally drawn by Hewlett. Cast includes Ann Magnuson, Malcolm McDowell, Lori Petty, Iggy Pop, Stacy Linn Ramsower, Ice-T and Naomi Watts. 104 minutes. Colour. / A tank-riding female ...
McCollum, Michael A
(1946- ) US control-systems engineer (specializing in aerospace propulsion) and author, who began publishing sf with "Duty, Honor, Planet" for Analog, April 1979. His first novel, A Greater Infinity (fixup 1982), established the pattern he would follow through the 1980s: a complex Space-Opera adventure plot – assembling the variously published Greater Infinity stories beginning with ...
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 ...