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Saturday 10 October 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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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
First Man Into Space
Film (1958), also known by its original screenplay title Satellite of Blood. Amalgamated/MGM. Directed by Robert Day. Written by John C Cooper, Lance Z Hargreaves, based on the original screenplay "Satellite of Blood" by Wyott Ordung. Cast includes Robert Ayres, Bill Edwards, Marla Landi and Marshall Thompson. 77 minutes. Black and white. / This is the second of two sf films made by Amalgamated in the UK that pretend to be set in the USA (the other was ...
Uchūdaikaijū Girara
Film (1967; vt The X from Outer Space). Shôchiku Eiga. Directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu. Written by Moriyoshi Ishida, Eibi Motomochi, Kazui Nihonmatsu. Cast includes Mike Daneen, Peggy Neal, Keisuke Sonoi, Toshiya Wazaki and Shinichi Yanagisawa. 89 minutes. Colour. / Four astronauts – Captain Sano (Wazaki), biologist Lisa (Neal), Dr Shioda (Sonoi), and communications officer Miyamoto (Yanagisawa) – are sent on a flight to Mars to ...
Gresh, Danny
(1989- ) From the age of ten, Danny Gresh collaborated with his mother Lois H Gresh on the Young Adult Chuck Farris books, Chuck Farris and the Tower of Darkness (2001), Chuck Farris and the Labyrinth of Doom (2001), and Chuck Farris and the Cosmic Storm (2002), all centred on PlayStation2 Videogames. He has also collaborated with Lois ...
Magic Realism
A term originally used to describe a form of literature most commonly associated with twentieth-century Latin America, most notably in the works of Isabel Allende (1942- ), Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974), Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980), Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929-2005), Gabriel García Márquez (1928-2014) and Juan Rulfo (1918-1986). English-language practitioners include Donald ...
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 ...