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Thursday 17 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.
Site updated on 16 July 2025
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Williams, Tess
(1954-2025) UK-born teacher, editor and author, in Australia for many years, there receiving a degree in literature from Curtin University and an MA in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. She began publishing work of genre interest with "The Padwan Affair" in She's Fantastical (anth 1995) edited by Judith Raphael Buckrich and Lucy Sussex. Of sf interest are two novels: Map of Power (1996), set mostly in a ...
Monsters [film]
Film (2010). Vertigo Films. Written and directed by Gareth Edwards. Cast includes Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy. 94 minutes. Colour. / A returning probe carrying samples from the geothermal oceans of Europa (see Jupiter) has crashed in central America, which is now infested with giant cephalopods in an international quarantine zone. Cynical photojournalist McNairy is reluctantly charged with delivering his boss's daughter (Able) to safety in the US before ...
Page, Jake
Working name of US author James Keena Page Jr (1936-2016), most of whose work is nonfiction, with a focus on the natural history of Western America and on Native American culture. His fiction consists mostly of mysteries set in Western venues. Of sf interest is Operation: Shatterhand (1996), an Alternate History set in a World War Two in which Germans invade the American West (see ...
Secret of the Telegian
Japanese film (1960). Original title Densō Ningen. Toho. Directed by Jun Fukuda. Written by Shinichi Sekizawa. Cast includes Akihiko Hirata, Seizaburo Kawazu, Tadao Nakamaru, Takamaru Sasaki and Koji Tsuruta. 85 minutes. Colour. / Hearing of a murder in an amusement park's Cave of Horror, Kirioka (Tsuruta) – a reporter from the science desk of a Tokyo newspaper – decides to investigate. Finding a piece of wire in the cave he takes it ...
Riddell, J L
(1807-1865) US chemist, botanist, inventor and author of Orrin Lindsay's Plan of Aerial Navigation, with a Narrative of his Explorations in the Higher Regions of the Atmosphere, and his Wonderful Voyage Round the Moon! (1847 chap), a Scientific Hoax narrative clearly indebted to Edgar Allan Poe's "Hans Phaall – A Tale" (June 1835 The Southern Literary Messenger), both exemplifying the complex ...
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 ...