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Tuesday 9 June 2026
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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Tate, Peter
(1940- ) Welsh journalist and author who began publishing sf with "The Post-Mortem People" in New Worlds for March 1966 (rev vt "Beyond the Weeds" in SF 12, anth 1968, ed Judith Merril); this was assembled with his other short fiction as Seagulls under Glass and Other Stories (coll 1975). His first novel, The Thinking Seat (1969), began a loose sequence of tales ...
Le Drimeur, Alain
Pseudonym of the unidentified French author (? -? ) whose Utopia, La Cité Future (1890; trans Brian Stableford as The Future City 2012), responds positively to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888). The frame story, though inherently implausible, does vigorously demonstrate the author's conviction that ...
Romania
Romanian sf is almost a century and a half old. 1873 marked the appearance of the novelette "Finis Rumaniae" ["The End of Romania"] (1873 Viitorul) by the obscure author Al. N Dariu; two years later came a future Utopia, Spiritele anului 3000 ["Spirits of the Year 3000"] (1875 Revista "Junimei") by Demetriu G Ionnescu (the form of his name used by the statesman Take Ionescu [1858-1922]). The earliest sf writer proper in Romania was Victor Anestin ...
Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman
Japanese Original Video Animation (OVA) (1996). Original title Tokumu Sentai Shainzuman. Based on the Manga by Kaimu Tachibana. Production I.G. Directed by Shinya Sadamitsu. Written by Hideki Sonoda. Voice cast includes Yasunori Matsumoto, Ryoko Sakakibara, Nozomu Sasaki, Toshihiko Seki and Hekiru Shiina. Two 30-minute episodes. Colour. / This is an affectionate Parody of ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...