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Tuesday 9 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.
Site updated on 8 June 2026
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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 ...
Mork & Mindy
US tv series (1978-1982). Miller-Milkis Productions, Henderson Productions, Paramount Television/ABC. Created by Garry K Marshall, Dale McRaven and Joe Gauberg. Produced by Marshall. Writers include McRaven, Bruce Johnson, April Kelly, Ed Scharlach and Tom Tenowich. Directors include Bob Claver and Howard Storm. Cast (highly selected) includes Pam Dawber, Ralph James (voice), Conrad Janis, Elizabeth Kerr, Tom Poston, Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters. One 50-minute pilot episode ...
Cobb, James H
(1953-2014) US author in whose Technothriller, Choosers of the Slain (1996), a stealth destroyer full of Inventions, and captained by a woman Commander perhaps supernaturally attuned to her ship, is pitted against an Argentinian attempt to claim the whole of Antarctica; further novels in the Amanda Garrett sequence hover within the same quasi-sf environment. The sf singleton Cibola (2004), set in ...
Shaw, Ali
(1982- ) UK author who remains best known for his first novel, The Girl with Glass Feet (2009), a fantasy in which elements of folklore surface through the tale of the metamorphosis of a young woman into glass; The Man Who Rained (2012) is also fantasy. Of some sf interest is The Trees (2016), set in a UK suddenly afflicted by a supernatural-seeming Disaster, a sudden countrywide irruption of ...
Perry, S D
(1970- ) US author, daughter of Steve Perry, who has also written as Stephani Perry; in her career to date she has specialized in Ties for various universes. Her contributions to the Aliens universe begin with Aliens: The Female War (1993) as Stephani Perry with Steve Perry; her Resident Evil novels – ...
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 ...