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Monday 10 November 2025
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 4 November 2025
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Watkins, Peter
(1935-2025) UK Television and film director, active as a maker of documentary films from 1959. He was one of the pioneers of the technique of staging historical or imaginary events as if they were contemporary and undergoing television-news coverage, making his reputation with two quasidocumentaries or "docudramas" for BBC TV: Culloden (1964), in which participants at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 are interviewed by modern journalists; and ...
Nova Awards
UK Fandom-based Awards presented from 1973 to 2014 for Fanzine-related activity, under the auspices of Britain's second regular convention, the annual and still continuing Novacon (which see). For its first four years the Nova Award was selected by a panel of knowledgable fan judges from fanzine titles nominated by Novacon members. The first three awards were given for a specific issue ...
Nude on the Moon
Film (1961). Moon Productions. Directed by Raymond Phelan and Doris Wishman. Written by Raymond Phelan and Doris Wishman. Cast includes Lester Brown, Marietta and Walter Meyer. 83 minutes. Colour. / While waiting to hear whether the government will finance his proposed rocket to the Moon, brilliant young Scientist Jeff Huntley (Brown) inherits three million dollars from his uncle and tells his colleague and mentor, the ...
Rath, E J
Joint pseudonym of authors Chauncey Corey Brainerd (1874-1922) and Edith Rathbone Jacobs Brainerd (1885-1922), a married couple who died simultaneously when the Knickerbocker Theatre roof collapsed onto them. In the Near Future The Sixth Speed (1910) a disgruntled inventor applies his Invention – a yacht capable of carrying a substantial cargo at 120mph indefinitely – to piracy on the high seas, but is ...
Mysterious Wu Fang, The
US Pulp magazine, seven issues September 1935 to March 1936, monthly, published by Popular Publications; edited by Edythe Seims working for Rogers Terrill. / Intended to capitalize on the popularity of Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu-Manchu (featured in films and a Radio series of the period; see Fu Manchu), The Mysterious Wu Fang showed the ...
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 ...