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Sunday 15 February 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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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
1984
Film (1955). Holiday Film Productions. Directed by Michael Anderson. Written by William P Templeton, Ralph Bettinson, based on Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell. Cast includes Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, Michael Redgrave and Jan Sterling. 91 minutes. Black and white. / After the success of a 1954 BBC TV production of Nineteen Eighty-Four, scripted by Nigel ...
McIntosh, Will
(1962- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "A Flea Market Vendor Falls in Love in a Time of Sleeplessness" in NFG for September 2003, and who has since published his short fiction widely. Reviewing his first novel, Soft Apocalypse (September 2005 Interzone; much exp 2011), Gary K Wolfe suggested in "Locus Looks at Books" (February 2011 ...
Something Is Out There
1. Film (1977); vt of The Day of the Animals. / 2. US/Australian tv miniseries (1988). CPT Holdings/Hoyts for NBC. Executive producers Frank Lupo, John Ashley. Directed by Richard Colla. Written Lupo. Cast includes Joe Cortese, Maryam d'Abo and George Dzundza. Two 100-minute episodes. / This sometimes exciting, often threadbare policier pits a tough Earth cop (Cortese) and a marooned, ...
Ralston, Gilbert
(1912-1999) Northern Ireland-born screenwriter and author, in America for many years, who may have sometimes written as by Stephen Gilbert (see Stephen Gilbert for discussion of the resulting confusion). It was, however, under his own name that Ralston wrote the screenplay for Willard (1971), the film of the 1968 novel by the "real" Stephen Gilbert, and for the sequel, Ben (script 1971; novelization 1972); in the 1970s he ...
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 ...