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Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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Mutations
Film (1973). Getty Picture Corp/Columbia. Directed by Jack Cardiff. Written by Robert D Weinbach, Edward Mann. Cast includes Tom Baker, Michael Dunn, Julie Ege and Donald Pleasence. 92 minutes. Colour. / In this scientifically ludicrous UK film a Mad Scientist (Pleasence) attempts to combine plant with animal life, aided by the dwarf owner of a carnival freak-show (Dunn), who obtains human guinea-pigs for his experiments and exhibits the results. Tom ...
Pachter, Josh
(1951- ) US author, chiefly of short crime fiction, translator and editor. Of genre interest are his two reprint Anthologies of the included authors' favourite tales: Top Science Fiction: The Authors' Choice, Selected and Introduced by the Authors Themselves (anth 1984) and Top Fantasy: The Authors' Choice, Selected and Introduced by the Authors Themselves (anth 1985). The selections are mostly well known; the ...
Dibell, Ansen
Pseudonym of US author Nancy Dibble (1942-2006) whose sf sequence, the Strange and Fantastic History of the King of Kantmorie, comprises five Planetary Romances, though only the first three – Pursuit of the Screamer (1978), Circle, Crescent, Star (1981) and Summerfair (1982) – have appeared in their original language. For English readers, the outcome of the sequence will remain unclear, along ...
Robinson, Phil
(1847-1902) UK journalist and author of stories and essays mostly set in a romanticized India or Africa (see Imperialism); his collections, usually interspersing fiction and nonfiction, include some sf. Of strongest interest may be "The Hunting of the Soko" (in Under the Punkah, coll 1881), an Apes as Human tale that may have influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs's creation of ...
Wilson, Hardy
(1881-1955) Australian painter, architect and author, most of whose writings espouse visions of Utopia soured by a persistent anti-Semitism, beginning with The Cow Pasture Road (1920). The fictional element in these texts varies from cursory to minimal. His vision of an orientalized ideal home called Celestion, a central glory of the imagined ideal City of Kurrajong, is central to almost all of this work, soaking it in a ...
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 ...