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Sunday 7 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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Kamikaze 1989
Film (1982; vt Kamikaze; vt Kamikaze '89). Regina Ziegler/Trio/Oase/ZDF. Directed by Wolf Gremm. Written by Robert Katz, Gremm, based on Mord pa 31 (1965; trans as Murder on the 31st Floor 1966) by Per Wahlöö. Cast includes Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Boy Gobert, Nicole Heesters, Günther Kaufmann and Franco Nero. 106 minutes. Colour. / In the Germany of 1989 people have no problems. They are ...
Dashner, James
(1972- ) US author whose work has been restricted to three Young Adult series, the first of which, The Jimmy Fincher Saga, beginning with A Door in the Woods (2003), is fantasy. The 13th Reality sequence, beginning with The Journal of Curious Letters (2008), sets its young protagonist the sf-coloured task of protecting the vast number of Alternate Worlds created ...
Sinclair, Upton
(1878-1968) US playwright and author known primarily for his work outside the sf field, particularly for his "muckraker" novels of social criticism, including The Jungle (25 February-4 November 1905 Appeal to Reason; rev 1906) and Oil! (1927), the latter filmed as There Will be Blood (2007); and for The Gnomobile: A Gnice Gnew Gnarrative with Gnonsense, but Gnothing Gnaughty (1936), a juvenile fantasy which was filmed by Disney as ...
Bell, Harry
(1947- ) UK civil servant (retired 1997) and artist, active in Fandom since 1965 though with occasional periods of silence. He has contributed cartoon artwork to many Fanzines including Ansible, Checkpoint, Maya, Robert Lichtman's Trap Door and Leroy Kettle's ...
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 ...