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Sunday 12 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.
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Club Story
1. Tales told within an enabling frame-story (sometimes referred to as a "cornice") to a group of companions in a sheltered venue have only recently been called club stories, a term of nineteenth-century provenance that has proved currently useful. It is not perhaps a term that very adequately encompasses (for instance) the implications of Odysseus's narrating most of the prior events of The Odyssey (circa 700 BCE) (see Homer) late in the tale, ...
Cosmic Brotherhood Association
Official English translation of the Uchū Yūkō Kyōkai, an organization founded in Japan in 1957 for the purpose of establishing contact with Aliens. Swept up in the UFO fervour of the era, aviation journalist Yūsuke Matsumura derived a strong inspiration from the flying-saucer cult of George van Tassel in the United States, suggesting that aliens could be contacted through ...
Wilbur, Anne T
(1817-1864) US translator, who also published as by Florence Leight, Mrs John Procter and Mrs Annie T Wood. Her version of "La science en famille. Un voyage en ballon. (Réponse à l'énigme de juillet.)" (August 1851 Musée des famille, seconde série; trans May 1852 Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art as "A Voyage in a Balloon") was the first translation of Jules Verne into English. Other translations ...
Never Let Me Go
Film (2010). DNA Films and Film 4 present a Fox Searchlight Pictures production. Directed by Mark Romanek. Written by Alex Garland, based on Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro. Cast includes Andrew Garfield, Sally Hawkins, Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Charlotte Rampling. 103 minutes. Colour. / In an Alternate World ...
Escapement
UK film (1958; vt The Dream Machine; vt The Electronic Monster). Amalgamated Productions. Directed by Montgomery Tully and, for the dream sequences, David Paltenghi. Written by Charles Eric Maine, based on his novel Escapement (1956; vt The Man Who Couldn't Sleep 1958), with additional dialogue by J MacLaren Ross. Cast includes Kay Callard, Rod Cameron, Larry Cross, Meredith Edwards, Peter Illing, John ...
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 ...