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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 ...
Chrononauts
Card Game (2000). Looney Labs (LL). Designed by Andrew Looney. / Chrononauts is a light hearted game of Time Travel. A special deck of cards is laid out to form a map of the timeline, specifying a somewhat US-centric set of significant events such as the assassination of President Lincoln and the launch of Sputnik. Players can then use cards from their hands to alter history at ...
Ings, Simon
(1965- ) UK author who began publishing sf with "Blessed Fields" in Other Edens III (anth 1989) edited by Christopher Evans and Robert P Holdstock; and who has become moderately prolific as an author of short stories. His first novel, Hot Head (1992), heatedly and congestedly, and with moments of Cyberpunk-ish brilliance, presents the ...
World Ships
The Spaceship or Starship which is also a world, or vast enough to have resources comparable to a world's, is a concept that partly overlaps the popular sf theme of Generation Starships (which see). The possibility is briefly discussed towards the end of the nineteenth century in John Munro's A Trip to Venus (1897): / "Why should we not ...
Birds of Prey
US tv series (2002-2003). Warner Brothers Television and DC Entertainment with Tollin/Robbins Productions for the WB Television Network. Based on characters created by Gardner F Fox, Carmine Infantino, Bob Kane, Bob Layton, Paul Levitz, John Ostrander, Jerry Robinson, Jo Staton, others. Producers included Peter Giuliano, Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis. Directors included Jim Charleston, Chris Long, Brian Robbins. Writers ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...