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Wednesday 16 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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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]
Yosei Gorasu
Film (1962; vt Gorath). Toho Studios. Directed by Ishirō Honda. Written by Takeshi Kimura, based on a story by Jojiri Okami. Cast includes Akihiko Hirata, Ryō Ikebe, Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, Hiroshi Tachikawa and Jun Tazaki. 88 minutes, cut for US release to 83 minutes. Colour. / A small but massive Star, named Gorath, enters the Solar System and begins to disrupt planetary orbits. A Japanese ...
Carrasco, Jesús
Working name of Spanish author Jesús Carrasco Jaramillo (1972- ) in whose first novel, Intemperie (2013; trans Margaret Jull Costa as Out in the Open 2015), a young man engages in a trek across a savagely overheated desert landscape reminiscent of central Spain though hotter (see Climate Change), encountering savants and supernaturally intense Villains in his search for ...
Stone, Rodney
(1932- ) UK author, mostly of nonfantastic thrillers under his own name and as by Matthew Hunter. Of sf interest is The Cambridgeshire Disaster (1967) as by Hunter, featuring the Near Future destruction of that academic enclave; Cries in the Night (1991), in which the contemporary abduction of two children uncannily evokes events from World War Two, does not in fact trespass ...
Kemp, Randall H
(1852-1914) US field mineralogist from 1890 or earlier on expeditions in Pacific Rim states of America, and author of A Half-Breed Dance and Other Far Western Stories: Mining Camp, Indian and Hudson's Bay Tales Based on the Experiences of the Author (coll 1909), which contains two tales of interest: "Underneath Spokane" features a virtual Hollow Earth of underground caverns; and in the Lost World described in "The ...
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 ...