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Wednesday 9 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2025
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Haynes, Mary
(1938- ) US author of two Young Adult novels of sf interest: Wordchanger (1983), featuring a "machine" capable of literally changing words and therefore the realities which they command (see Linguistics; Perception); and Raider's Sky (1987), a Post-Holocaust tale set shortly after a disastrous agricultural ...
Atom Age Vampire
Film (1960; vt Seddok, l'erede, di Satana Italy; vt Seddok UK). Leone Films/ Manson Distributing. Directed by Anton Giulia Majona; English language version directed by Richard McNamara. Written by Gino De Santi, Alberto Bevilacqua, and Majona. English dialogue by John Hart. Cast includes Roberto Bertea, Sergio Fantoni, Susanne Loret, Alberto Lupo, Franca Parsi and Andrea Scotti. 107 minutes; usually cut to 87 minutes for video, although prints of varying lengths exist. ...
Interactive Fiction
Term apparently coined by Robert Lafore to describe the text Adventures he wrote for Adventure International (AI), among them the crime game Local Call For Death (1979 AI, TRS80). The phrase came into general use when it was employed by the development house Infocom to promote such works as A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985) by emphasizing their connections with literature as opposed to ...
Mosura
Film (1961; vt Mothra). Toho. Directed by Ishirō Honda. Written by Shinichi Sekizawa, based on a story by Shinichiro Nakamura, Takehido Fukunaga, Yoshi Hotta. Cast includes Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, Kyoko Kagawa, Hiroshi Koizumi and Frankie Sakai. 100 minutes. Colour. / Aficionados of Japanese Monster Movies find their delight not only in the monsters themselves: the attraction depends also on the sheer bizarreness, to Western eyes and ears, ...
Appleseed
Animated film (2004). Sori. Directed by Shinji Aramaki. Written by Haruka Handa, Tsutomo Kamishiro, based on the Manga Appleseed (begun 1985) by Masamune Shirow. 105 minutes. Colour. / This is the second adaptation of this manga, after the cruder, made-for-video Appleseed (1988). Appleseed is set in a future where most of Earth has been reduced to cinders by global conflict, and ...
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 ...