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Monday 20 April 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 20 April 2026
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Watson, Ian
(1943-2026) UK teacher and author who lectured in English in Tanzania (1965-1967) and Tokyo (1967-1970) before beginning to publish sf with "Roof Garden Under Saturn" for New Worlds in 1969; he then taught Future Studies for six years at Birmingham Polytechnic, taking there one of the first academic courses in sf in the UK; he became a full-time writer in 1976, publishing around 200 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
Guardians of the Galaxy
Film (2014). Marvel Studios. Directed by James Gunn. Written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman. Cast includes Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper (voice), Vin Diesel (voice and some motion capture), Karen Gillan, Lee Pace, Chris Pratt, Michael Rooker and Zoe Saldana. 121 minutes. Colour, 3D (converted). / Five outlaws chasing the bounty on a cosmic McGuffin are cheated of the prize and thrown into a space Prison together; when the orb they ...
Kamikaze 1989
Film (1982; vt Kamikaze; vt Kamikaze '89). Regina Ziegler/Trio/Oase/ZDF. Directed by Wolf Gremm. Written by Robert Katz, Gremm, based on Mord pa 31 (1965; trans as Murder on the 31st Floor 1966) by Per Wahlöö. Cast includes Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Boy Gobert, Nicole Heesters, Günther Kaufmann and Franco Nero. 106 minutes. Colour. / In the Germany of 1989 people have no problems. They are ...
Krohn, Leena
(1947- ) Finnish author whose first novels were composed for younger readers, an example being Ihmisen vaatteissa: Kertomus kaupungilta (1976; trans Bethany Fox as "The Pelican's New Clothes: A Story from the City" in Collected Fiction 2015), whose young protagonist experiences a magical City through his relationship with the eponymous talking bird. Krohn's focus on multivariant experiences of urban life [for Beast ...
Starmont House
Former US Small Press, located successively in West Linn, Oregon, and in Mercer Island, Washington State from 1980, founded 1976 by T E Dikty, specializing in monographs on individual sf writers, along with some Bibliographies of and guides to sf magazines and book lines, and occasional reprints of pulp and paperback fiction. Starmont's first book was ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...