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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 ...
Wyatt, Horace
(1876-1954) UK author, almost exclusively on cars and the motoring industry; his spoofish Satire, Malice in Kulturland (1914 chap), bases its mild deprecations (uttered just as World War One begins) on Lewis Carroll's Wonderland books, with W Tell's illustrations executed in the mode of the recently deceased John Tenniel (1820-1914). Wyatt is at his sharpest in his references to ...
Disenchantment
US animated tv series (2018-current). Created by Matt Groening. Developed by Matt Groening and Josh Weinstein. The ULULU Company, Rough Draft Studios. Directors include Wesley Archer, David D. Au, Frank Marino and Ira Sherak. Writers include David X. Cohen, Eric Horsted and Bill Oakley. Voice cast includes Eric Andre, John DiMaggio, Nat Faxon, Sharon Horgan, Abbi Jacobson, Phil LaMarr, Maurice LaMarche and Tress MacNeille. 40 28-minute (or thereabouts) episodes. Colour. / In the ...
Larison, John
(1979- ) US author whose first work, the nonfiction The Complet Steelheader (2008) on fly-fishing, and his first two novels, which are also about fishing, led to Whisky When We're Dry (2018), a nonfantastic Western narrated by a girl forced to masquerade as a boy. Larison is of sf interest for The Ancients (2024), set on an Earth sufficiently distant from the Near-Future devastations caused by ...
Oppenheim, Josephine Greve
(1849-1915) US author, who wrote as by John Emersie and as by A O (she was married to Ansel Oppenheim from 1869). She is of sf interest for Allisto: A Romance (1884 as by John Emersie; cut vt Evelyn: A Tale of the West and the Far East 1904 as by A O), whose protagonist, the mysterious Allisto, may be the scion of a stock superior to Homo sapiens, but whose Telepathic powers do not give him respite. Before his death, he conveys to ...
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 ...