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Saturday 6 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.
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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 ...
Zone Troopers
Film (1985). Altar/Empire. Executive producer Charles Band. Directed by Danny Bilson. Written by Bilson, Paul DeMeo. Cast includes Art La Fleur, Biff Maynard, Tim Thomerson and Timothy Van Patten. 86 minutes. Colour. / This curious, small, honest film is perhaps as close as the cinema has ever got to the flavour of Pulp sf. Three GIs and a war correspondent are trapped behind German lines in Italy in 1944. In between repeated ...
Jennison, John W
(1911-1980) UK author, one of several who became active as mass-producers of genre fiction for UK paperback houses and who remained reticent about personal details during their careers. From about 1945 to the year in which it is thought he may have died, Jennison seems to have written over 100 novels under at least forty pseudonyms, mostly thrillers and Westerns; he began to publish routine but occasionally engaging sf with two novels as Edgar Rees Kennedy, ...
Harris-Burland, J B
(1870-1926) UK author who began to publish magazine stories before the end of the nineteenth century, and who was very early to use the automobile in tales of adventure, an example being "Lord Beden's Motor" (December 1901 Strand). His first novels of sf interest, Dacobra, or The White Priests of Ahriman (1903) and The Princess Thora (1904; vt Dr Silex 1905 UK as J B Harris-Burland), were signed Harris Burland. ...
AVP Alien vs Predator
Film (2004). Twentieth Century Fox presents a Davis Entertainment Company/Brandywine production. Directed by Paul W S Anderson. Written by Anderson, from a screen story by Anderson, Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, based on the Alien (1979) characters created by O'Bannon and Shusett and the Predator (1987) characters created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. Cast includes Raoul Bova, ...
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 ...