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Monday 13 July 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.
Site updated on 13 July 2026
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Sunless Sea
Videogame (2014). Failbetter Games. Designed by Alexis Kennedy. Platforms: PC. / Expanding the world first seen in Fallen London (2009), Sunless Sea takes the player away from the smoke of Fallen London in order to sail and explore the mysterious Unterzee that surrounds it. The game is considerably different from the original, changing the genre of the game and expanding the compact, narratively dense world ...
Peterson, Lorin
(? - ) US author of Ma Windsor (1983), a Near Future Satire on American mores and politics whose protagonist, being elected the first female President of the United States, causes disarray by making the wealthy ineligible to claim social security, reducing the nuclear Weapons stockpile, and bringing all the soldiers home from their international redoubts. ...
McGuire, Richard
(1957- ) US comics artist and author whose Graphic Novel Here (graph 2014), which began as a short story in graphic form, "Here" (January 1989 RAW), is of considerable sf interest. The basic structure of the enterprise is non-chronological. Each double-page panel gives a perspectivally invariant view of a single location in north-eastern America, probably semi-rural New Jersey, so that the "tale" is locked in space. ...
Crackle of Death
Made-for-tv film (1976). Francy Productions for Universal Television. Produced by Cy Chermak. Directed by Alex Grasshoff and Don Weiss. Written by Arthur Rowe and Rudolph Borchert from an idea by Rowe ("The Energy Eater"); Bill S Ballinger ("Firefall"). Cast includes Fred Bier, Philip Carey, Elaine Giftos, Jack Grinnage, Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, William Smith, Michael Strong and Robert Yuro. 92 minutes. Colour. / This film actually ...
Morton, A S
(1862-1900) US poet and author of a Lost Race novel, Beyond the Palæocrystic Sea: Or, the Legend of Halfjord (1895), set in the permanent (ie palaeocrystic) ice around the North Pole, where an extremely non-monogamous Norse culture seems to thrive, though hints of a Hollow Earth are never fulfilled, and they must hunt to eat. Much of the book is devoted to a potted historical romance about ninth-century ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...