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Friday 12 December 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 11 December 2025
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Varley, John
(1947-2025) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Picnic on Nearside" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 1974, and who was soon thought to be the most significant new sf writer of the late 1970s. He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments like cloning (see Clones) and Identity Transfer, many of ...
Inhuman Woman, The
French silent film (1924); original title L'Inhumaine, subtitled Histoire Féerique ["Fairy Story"]. La Société des Films Armor, Cinégraphic. Directed by Marcel L'Herbier. Written by Marcel L'Herbier, Georgette Leblanc and Pierre Mac Orlan. Cast includes Jaque Catelain, Philippe Hériat, Georgette Leblanc and Léonid Walter de Malte. 135 minutes. Black and white, but with colour filters. / "Rich, ...
Cronenberg, David
(1943- ) Canadian film-maker, author, actor and director, one of the most important practitioners of sf, in any medium, of the last quarter of the twentieth century. From his early student and underground films – Transfer (1966), From the Drain (1967), Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic) (1969) and ...
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Film (2014). Twentieth Century Fox in association with TSG Entertainment. Directed by Matt Reeves. Written by Mark Bomback and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, based on characters created by Jaffa & Silver. Cast includes Jason Clarke, Toby Kebbell, Karin Konoval, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Andy Serkis, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Nick Thurston. 130 minutes. Colour, 3D. / Ten years after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes ...
Jūnen
["Ten Years"] Film (2018 Japan; vt Ten Years Japan in English signage). Freestone Productions, Asahi Shinbunsha, Ten Years Japan Production Committee. Directed by Akiyo Fujimura, Chie Hayakawa, Kei Ishikawa, Yūsuke Kinoshita and Ai Tsuno. Cast includes Chizuru Ikewaki, Satoru Kawaguchi, Jun Kunimura and Hana Sugisaki. Screenplay by the directors. 99 minutes. Colour. / An anthology piece of five Near-Future ...
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 ...