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Friday 11 July 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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Drinkard, William H
(? - ) US politician (serving in the Alabama Senate 1978-1990), real estate developer and author of the sf novel Elom (2008), in which it is discovered that the eponymous planet is a kind of experimental Zoo where samples of various species – including Homo sapiens – have been abducted (see UFOs) from their native environments and left to evolve, under strictly controlled ...
Alternate History
An alternate history – some writers and commentators prefer the designation "alternative history" on grammatical grounds, some use the unelucidative Counterfactual, and others apply the term "uchronia" (see Charles Bernard Renouvier) – is an account of Earth (sometimes extending to exploration of solar-system space) as it might have become in consequence of some hypothetical alteration in history (see ...
Memoirs of a Survivor
Film (1981). Memorial Films/National Film Finance Corporation/EMI. Directed by David Gladwell. Written by Kerry Crabbe, Gladwell, based on The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) by Doris Lessing. Cast includes Julie Christie, Christopher Guard, Debbie Hutchings and Leonie Mellinger. 115 minutes. Colour. / Amid Near-Future scenes of urban squalor in Western London a middle-aged woman (Christie) observes (mostly ...
Casey, Richard
Originally a pseudonym of Leroy Yerxa; after his death a House Name used on the Ziff-Davis magazines from 1943 to 1949. Two of the thirteen "Casey" stories, "Pearl-Handled Poison" (December 1943 Fantastic Adventures) and "Carrion Crypt" (July 1947 Fantastic Adventures) are known to have been written by Yerxa. ...
Romilus, Arn
A Curtis Warren House Name used by Brian Holloway for one novel and by Denis Hughes for two. [JC/DRL]
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 ...