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Sunday 7 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 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 ...
Medieval Futurism
Term coined by John Carnell in his introduction to New Writings in SF 12 (anth 1967) to describe a contemporary trend of sf containing "Future technologies, often on other planets, but with heavy overtones of the Middle Ages feudal systems as the governing bodies." (see History in SF) Examples cited by Carnell include L Sprague de Camp's Divide and Rule (April-May 1939 ...
Stangerup, Henrik
(1937-1998) Danish journalist, playwright and author who worked mainly within the tradition of "new realism" prevalent in Denmark during the 1960s; he also wrote historical fiction. His sf novel Manden der ville vaere skyldig (1973; trans David Gress-Wright as The Man Who Wanted to Be Guilty 1982) is a Satire assaulting the Dystopian welfare state and the Social Democratic party through a ...
Pon, Cindy
(1973- ) Taiwan-born painter and author, in USA from 1980, most of whose work has been Young Adult fantasy, as are her first series, the Silver Phoenix sequence beginning with Silver Phoenix (2009), and the Kingdom of Xia 2 sequence beginning with Serpentine (2015), which is set in ancient China. She is of sf interest for her third series, the Want sequence beginning with Want ...
Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn
Film (1983). Albert Band International. Directed and coproduced by Charles Band. Written by coproducer Alan J Adler. Cast includes Jeffrey Byron, Mike Preston and Tim Thomerson. 83 minutes. 3-D. Colour. / More Science Fantasy than sf, this 3-D exploitation movie, set in a tribalized future wasteland, is notable for the absence of metalstorms and the fact that the totalitarian wizard Jared-Syn is not destroyed. The ...
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 ...