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Wednesday 9 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 7 July 2025
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Grosse Verhau, Der
Film (1970; vt The Big Mess). Kairos Film. Produced and directed by Alexander Kluge. Written by Kluge, Wolfgang Mai. Cast includes Silvia Forsthofer, Siegfried Graue, Vincenz Starr and Maria Sterr. 86 minutes. Black and white and colour. / This West German comedy is by a director – a leading light of the German New Wave – whose apprenticeship was with Fritz Lang. It is an amusing ...
Play by Email
Term used to describe a game in which the players communicate by electronic means, but not in real time. Thus, all messages sent in a Play By Email game are subject to delays resembling those imposed by a physical postal system. For convenience, this encyclopedia uses the term to cover any electronic form of communication, including email and entering information on a website, whether handled manually by the player or automatically by the game software. In essence, Play By Email is identical to ...
Rogers, Mac
(1974- ) Nickname and working name of US playwright David Michael Rogers, who was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. He began his efforts in playwriting and acting at a very early age, eventually studying theatre at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Basing himself in Brooklyn, New York, Rogers formed Gideon Productions in 1999 with college colleagues, Jordana and Sean Williams. Gideon began producing plays in the Fall of ...
J Lloyd Eaton Collection
In 1969 the late Donald Wilson, University Librarian at the University of California, Riverside Library (now the Tomás Rivera Library), purchased a Collection of 7500 volumes of sf and fantasy from the estate of J Lloyd Eaton MD. Eaton had for several decades collected many rare and unusual monographs of sf, including such items as Varney the Vampire (1847) and Frank Aubrey's King of the Dead ...
Gowing, Sidney
(1877-1943) UK author who also wrote as by David Goodwin, as by John Goodwin (who should be distinguished from the real John C Goodwin), and as by John Tregillis. Much of his work for the Boys' Papers appeared as single-issue tales (here treated as individual titles) in the Boys' Friend Library, either reprinted from earlier sources or original, beginning with the nonfantastic Man to Man (1908) as by David ...
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 ...