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Sunday 14 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 ...
Vader, John
(1919-2005) Australian author, in UK in the late 1960s and 1970s, most of whose work has been nonfiction, much of it dealing with military matters. His only sf novel, Battle of Sydney (1971), is an Alternate History of World War Two in which Australia is invaded by Japan; in the end the Invasion is unsuccessful. [JC]
Ridley, Frank A
The usual working name of UK politician, freethinker and author Francis Ambrose Ridley (1897-1994), most of whose books were on historical subjects. The Green Machine (1926) as by F H Ridley, though clearly cavalier in its treatment of science – presenting as it does the eponymous bicycle as a Spaceship capable of interplanetary travel – interestingly sends its protagonist to tour a crowded solar system, landing first on ...
Baird, Thomas
(1923-1990) US art historian, a lecturer with the Frick Collection 1954-1957, latterly a professor of art; his several well-received novels, beginning with Triumphal Entry (1962), often dealt with art history; none of this early work contained any significant element of the fantastic, but Where Time Ends (1988) is a Young Adult tale of some interest set in a Near Future world threatened by biological ...
Bad Taste
Film (1987). WingNut. Produced, directed, edited and special effects by Peter Jackson. Written by Jackson with additional material by Ken Hammond and Tony Hiles. Cast includes Jackson, Mike Minett, Pete O'Herne, Terry Potter and Doug Wren. 92 minutes cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / Aliens invade a small town to kill humans and use them as a meat-source in a new galactic fast-food franchise, but the Invasion is defeated, in this ...
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 ...