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Tuesday 11 November 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 10 November 2025
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Smith, L Neil
(1946-2021) US author, ex-police reserve officer, gunsmith and former state candidate for the US Libertarian Party, who began publishing sf with "Grimm's Law" for Stellar 5 (anth 1980) edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey. He remains best known for the North American Confederacy sequence, set in a parallel universe (see Parallel Worlds) in which a libertarian version of ...
Mind Game
Japanese animated film (2004). Based on the Manga by Robin Nishi. Studio 4°C. Directed and written by Masaaki Yuasa. Voice cast includes Takashi Fujii, Koji Imada, Sayaka Maeda and Seiko Takuma. 103 minutes. Colour. / After an opening fast-cut montage, set to ominous music, of events surrounding the life of 20 year old aspiring manga artist Nishi (Imada), we see him running into his old school ...
Out of This World [comic]
US Comic (1956-1959). Charlton Comics. 16 issues. Artists include Steve Ditko, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, Bill Molno and Charles Nicholas. Most of the scripts were by Joe Gill. Usually 4-6 comic strips per issue (save for the double-length #7 and #8) and a two page text short-story (but two in #7 and #8, none in #12), mainly sf and supernatural horror. / In the ...
Awful Green Things from Outer Space, The
Board Game (1979). Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). Designed by Tom Wham. / Awful Green Things is a parodic game with a design influenced by both map and counter Wargames and the more casual and humorous tradition of Board Game development, an ancestry it shares with its contemporary The Creature that Ate Sheboygan (1979). ...
D.A.R.Y.L.
Film (1985). World Film Services/Columbia. Directed by Simon Wincer. Written by David Ambrose, Allan Scott, Jeffrey Ellis. Cast includes Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean, Barret Oliver, Josef Sommer and Kathryn Walker. 100 minutes. Colour. / D.A.R.Y.L. is a Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform but, when "he" (Oliver) wakes up Amnesiac in the woods, he thinks he is just a small boy, Daryl. Adopted by a pleasant family, he learns not ...
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 ...