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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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Le Guin, Ursula K
(1929-2018) US author and poet, based in Portland, Oregon, whose first novel was published in 1966; by 1970 she was already recognized as one of the most important writers within the field. Decades before her death, her reputation had extended far beyond the readership of Genre SF, while within the genre she was honoured with five Hugos and six Nebulas; as much attention has been paid to her by the academic ...
England, Barry
(1932-2009) UK playwright and author whose first novel, Figures in a Landscape (1968), is a chase thriller set in a surreal unnamed South American country; it was filmed as Figures in a Landscape (1970) directed by Joseph Losey. His second novel, No Man's Land (1997), is a Post-Holocaust military thriller focused on a brigade of soldiers in a burnt-out environment who rescue some innocents and kill many who are not, ...
Lang, Allen Kim
(1928- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Machine of Klamugra" in Planet Stories for November 1950 and published a good number of action stories in the following decade: twenty titles are recorded, including the comic novella "Cinderella Story" (May 1961 If), and "Blind Man's Lantern" (December 1962 Analog), in which hoped ...
Zombie 15'
Board Game (2014). Iello. Designed by Guillaume Lémery and Nicolas Schlewitz. / Zombie 15' is one of a series of board games with a Zombie escape theme – players must escape from a Post-Holocaust scenario before they are eaten by a ravening horde. The game is timed, and players have exactly fifteen minutes to win. / Zombie 15' is played on a board composed ...
Styx
US rock band formed in Chicago in 1972, who achieved considerable success in the 1970s and early 1980s. Their sf concept album Kilroy Was Here (1983) introduced a more synth-led sound, and produced two hit singles in "Mr. Roboto" and "Don't Let It End"; but the songs are weak and overly theatrical. The story was a response to Christian anti-rock activists: The MMM (Majority for Musical Morality) has outlawed rock music, but the imprisoned singer Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (or ...
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 ...