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Saturday 11 April 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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Farningham, Marianne
Pseudonym of UK author Marianne Hearn (1834-1909), most of whose work was on religious themes; her sf novel, Nineteen Hundred?: A Forecast and a Story (1892), sets pious speculations of the role of Religion into a Near Future Britain, where Christians defeat anarchism by their good example. [JC]
Summerville, Jenny
(? - ) Australian author, the young protagonists of whose Young Adult sf novel, Shields of Trell (1984), play with the controls of their spacebus, and find it is a Starship capable of intergalactic travel. Various perils including a Black Hole are duly encountered. [JC]
Devinne, Paul
(? -? ) US author of a Sleeper Awakes tale, The Day of Prosperity: A Vision of the Century to Come (1902), whose protagonist, on awakening after a century of well-tended sleep, complacently discovers a Utopia on lines directly reminiscent of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888): but even more than Bellamy, Devinne sees technological ...
Mystery of the Third Planet
Russian animated film (1982; vt The Secret of the Third Planet; vt Alice and the Mystery of the Third Planet). Original title Tayna tretyey planety. Based on the novel Puteshestviye Alisy ["Alice's Travels"] (in Devotchka S Zemli omni 1974; vt Alisa's Travels) by Kir Bulychev. Soyuzmultfilm. Directed by Roman Kachanov. Written by Kir Bulychev. Voice cast includes Vladimir Druzhnikov, Nikolai Grabbe, Olga ...
Ashton, Edward
(1968- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with Midnight in Absheron (12 September 2014 Perihelion; 2016 ebook). His first novel, Three Days in April (2015), a singleton, is fantasy. The End of Ordinary (2017) is set in a Near Future world about to be upset by a Scientist's experiments in ...
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 ...