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Wednesday 18 February 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 18 February 2026
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Atomic Platters
The name – coined by Bill Geerhart at the Conelrad website [see links below] – for a short-lived sub-genre of 1940s and 1950s pop music concerned with an atomic World War Three and its aftermath (see Holocaust). Many, though not all, of the artists and songs that might be so classified fell into later obscurity, but this was in its day a fairly lively aural manifestation of the fascinations of ...
Macleod, Joseph
(1903-1984) UK barrister, poet, broadcaster and author, active from before 1930; much of his poetry was published as by Adam Drinan. His sf Satire, Overture to Cambridge: A Satirical Story (1936), is based on his own unpublished play staged at the Cambridge Festival Theatre, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, in 1933. Couched as a Scientific Romance, the tale eschews the Modernist bent ...
Ashwell, Pauline
Pseudonym of UK author Pauline Whitby (1926-2015), whose first book, Little Red Steamer (1941 chap), is a children's Fantasy, and who began writing sf at the age of fourteen with "Invasion from Venus" as Paul Ashwell for the small British magazine Yankee Science Fiction #21 in July 1942. Her real career, however, started with the stories she began to publish in Astounding as Pauline Ashwell, plus at least seven further ...
King of Thorn
Japanese animated film (2010). Original title Ibara no Ou. Sunrise. Based on the Manga by Yuji Iwahara. Directed by Kazuyoshi Katayama. Written by Kazuyoshi Katayama and Hiroshi Yamaguchi. Cast includes Kana Hanazawa, Tsutomu Isobe, Toshiyuki Morikawa, Eri Sendai and Akiko Yajima. 109 minutes. Colour. / After a 30-60 day incubation period, Acquired Cellular Induration Syndrome (ACIS), popularly known as Medusa, fatally ...
Fontana, D C
(1939-2019) US author, primarily writing for Television; she was associated from the beginning with Star Trek, initially as Gene Roddenberry's secretary, eventually as the story editor of the first series for its first two seasons (after which she moved to freelance work elsewhere). At least two of her scripts, Star Trek: "This Side of Paradise" (1966 chap) and ...
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 ...