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Tuesday 24 June 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.
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Weaver, Michael D
(1961-1998) US author and systems programmer who began publishing sf with Mercedes Nights (1987), a dark Cyberpunk-flavoured fable of cloning – the title is the plural of the name of the protagonist, Mercedes Night, a film star whose illegal Clones are being sold as love-slaves. The twenty-first century, heated and hectic and violent, seems to be about to endure a World War IV. Set in the same universe, centuries ...
Untamed Women
Film (1952). Jewell Enterprises, Inc/United Artists. Produced by Richard Kay. Directed by W Merle Connell. Written by George Wallace Sayre. Cast includes Mikel Conrad, Doris Merrick and Lyle Talbot. 70 minutes. Black and white. / During World War Two, US Air Force Officer Steven Holloway (Conrad) is found drifting on a raft in the Pacific ocean, in a weakened condition. In hospital Holloway is injected with a truth Drug by ...
Schmidt, Bryan Thomas
(1969- ) US author who has written sf from a Christian point of view (see Religion), as in his major work to date, the Saga of Davi Rhii comprising The Worker Prince (2012), Rivalry on a Sky Course: A Davil Rhii Story (2012 ebook) and The Returning (2013), whose female protagonist vigorously copes with traditional Space Opera trials, but whose faith remains ...
Toy Game
Term used by this encyclopedia to describe a form of Videogame in which, unlike most Games, the player is given no explicit goals to achieve. Such games are typically simulations of a complex technological or sociological system which can be experimented with in the manner of a Toy; the US designer Will Wright has described his own contributions to the form as "software toys". The ...
Choose Your Own Adventure
Gamebook series (from 1979). Bantam Books, Chooseco. Designed by Edward Packard, R A Montgomery. / Choose Your Own Adventure is a line of "variable plot" or "multiform" books for younger readers; the path taken through the text is determined entirely by choices made by the protagonist, without the Role Playing Game-like rule-based mechanics used in such series as ...
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 ...