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Friday 11 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.
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Frost, Thomas
(1821-1908) UK author of radical leanings – he was particularly active in the 1840s as a Chartist and as a writer who came close to espousing revolutionary actions – perhaps best known for his first volume of autobiography, Forty Years' Recollections, Literary and Political (1880). The North Pole, and Charlie Wilson's Adventures in Search of It (dated 1876 but 1875) as "By The Author of 'The Realm of the Ice King'" is a ...
Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Robot
Mexican film (1969; original title Las Luchadoras Vs El Robot Asesino). Cinematográfica Calderón S.A.. Directed by René Cardona. Written by Alfredo Salazar. Cast includes Carlos Agostí, Gloria Chávez, Joaquín Cordero, Héctor Lechuga, Genaro Moreno, Malú Reyes, Regina Torné and Gerardo Zepeda. 80 minutes. Colour. / A Robot in sunglasses abducts a tramp, taking ...
Bionic Woman, The
1. US tv series (1976-1978). Harve Bennett Productions and Universal for ABC. Created and produced by Kenneth Johnson. Cast includes Lindsay Wagner. Three seasons, 57 50-minute episodes. Colour. / In this spinoff from the successful Harve Bennett series The Six Million Dollar Man – its first episode being Part 2 of a story begun in the parent ...
Comets
Small, normally icy bodies of our solar system whose appearance during close approach to the Sun can be spectacular owing to heating and outgassing effects producing the coma (a visible local atmosphere surrounding the central nucleus) and long tail of dust and gas blown outward from the sun by the Solar Wind. Owing to this visibility and the regular return of short-period comets – whose home is in the Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit ...
Space: 1999
UK tv series (1975-1977). A Gerry Anderson Production for ITC. Created Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Producers Sylvia Anderson (season 1), Fred Freiberger (season 2). Executive producer Gerry Anderson. Directors included Ray Austin, Lee H Katzin, Charles Crichton, David Tomblin, Val Guest and Tom Clegg. Story consultant Christopher Penfold (1941-2024). Special effects: Brian Johnson. Writers included Christopher Penfold, Johnny Byrne, Terence Feely, ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...