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Saturday 12 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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Lawrence, James
(1773-1840) UK utopian thinker and author, mostly resident in the Continent, who had for several years been expounding the proto-Feminist arguments of his Utopia, The Empire of the Nairs: Or, the Rights of Women: An Utopian Romance in Twelve Books (1811 4vols), beginning with an essay (German title not known) on "The Nair System of Gallantry and Inheritance" (1793 Deutsche Merkur). A version of the novel (considerably ...
Hawkin, Martin
Working name of UK author Martin Hawkins (1913-1944), who from January 1936 was a staff member of The Bystander magazine, in which he published several stories; his war service took him abroad in 1940. His Invasion novel, When Adolf Came (1943), features an Alternate History in which the Germans conquer the UK. This Hitler Wins disaster is soon patriotically subverted when an ...
Queen of Outer Space
Film (1958). Allied Artists. Directed by Edward Bernds. Written by Charles Beaumont and Edward Bernds (uncredited), based on a story by Ben Hecht. Cast includes Paul Birch, Eric Fleming, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Laurie Mitchell and Dave Willock. 80 minutes. Colour. / Flying to Earth's Space Station to investigate intimations that we have unfriendly "neighbours", four astronauts watch as the ...
Peck, Richard E
(1936- ) US author and academic and university administrator, an active critic of both literature in general and sf in particular. He began publishing sf with "In Alien Waters" in Venture for November 1969. His sf novel, Final Solution (1973), is an amusing but grim tale in which a US academic is sent fifty years into the future (through Cryonics) to find universities and ...
Cat-Man
US Comic (1941-1946). Temerson, Helnit, Continental (#1-#5; #18-#32) and Holyoke (#6-#17). 33 issues; numbering is confusing, but #32 is the 33rd issue, there being two separate issues considered to be #26. Artists include Jack Alderman, L B Cole, Alan Mandel, Rudy Palais, Charles Quinlan Sr, C R Schaare and Allen Ulmer, with at least one cover by Alex Schomburg. Script writers include Herman C Browner, Charles Quinlan Jr, Don Rico ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...