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Sunday 7 June 2026
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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Carter, R M H
(? - ) UK author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Rotating Frame-Up" as Robert M H Carter in Pulsar 2 (anth 1979) edited by George Hay. His single sf novel, for Robert Hale Limited, is The Dream Killers (1981). [DRL] see also: Gravity. /
Space Truckers
Film (1996). Goldcrest Films International, Peter Newman Productions and InterAL. Produced and directed by Stuart Gordon. Written by Gordon and Ted Mann. Cast includes Barbara Crampton, Charles Dance, Stephen Dorff, Olwen Fouéré, Dennis Hopper, Tim Loane, Debi Mazar, Shane Rimmer and George Wendt. 95 minutes. Colour. / Ramshackle mises en scene, some garish over-acting, a careless handling of the underlying dynamic of conflict ...
Space Stations
Stories of space stations or artificial satellites appear early in sf, the first example being Edward Everett Hale's extraordinary "The Brick Moon" (October-December 1869 Atlantic Monthly) and its sequel "Life in the Brick Moon" (February 1870 Atlantic), in which the satellite of the title consists of many brick spheres connected by brick arches, and is launched, with people on board, by gigantic flywheels. Kurd ...
Divide, The
Film (2012). Instinctive Film/Preferred Content/Julijette Inc in coproduction with BR Group and Ink Connection. Directed by Xavier Gens. Written by Karl Muller and Eron Sheean. Cast includes Rosanna Arquette, Michael Biehn, Lauren German, Courtney B Vance and Milo Ventimiglia. 112 minutes. Colour. / After a nuclear strike on New York, nine survivors in a basement are besieged by sinister technologists from the surface, before progressively succumbing to ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...