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Sunday 19 July 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.
Site updated on 14 July 2026
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Time Opera
A potentially useful item of Terminology which has yet to be generally adopted. It seems to have been coined by Anthony Boucher in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, first as a description of Jack Williamson's The Legion of Time (May-July 1938 Astounding; rev 1952) in "Recommended Reading" (April 1953 ...
Mr Drake's Duck
Film (1951). Douglas Fairbanks Productions. Eros Films (UK), United Artists (US). Produced by Daniel M Angel. Directed by Val Guest. Written by Guest and Ian Messiter based on a radioplay by Messiter. Cast includes Yolande Donlan, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Jon Pertwee. 85 minutes UK; 75 minutes US. Black and white. / American Donald Drake (Fairbanks) and his wife Penny (Donlan) arrive at Green Acres Farm, Sussex, which Drake has inherited from an English relation. ...
Winters, Ben H
(1976- ) US playwright, journalist and author whose first books – including The Jewish Comedy Thesaurus: 3,102 Quips, Quotes, and Kvetches (2007) and the Worst-Case Scenario series of spoofs with David Borgenicht and Robin Epstein – were comic nonfiction. He is of sf interest for two series. His contributions to his publisher's Quirk Classics sequence are Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) with Jane Austen ...
Dimaline, Cherie
(1975- ) Canadian author whose Métis background has shaped her work, much of it nonfantastic, though the Young Adult Marrow Thieves sequence beginning with The Marrow Thieves (2017) is sf. In a Near Future Dystopian world afflicted by Climate Change, where most humans have lost the ability ...
Babylon 5
US tv series (1993-1998). Babylonian Productions for Warner Bros. Television. Created by J Michael Straczynski. Producers include Straczynski, John Copeland, and Douglas Netter. Directors include Michael Vejar, David J Eagle, Janet Greek and Jim Johnston. Writers include Straczynski, Lawrence G DiTillio, D C Fontana, Peter David, Harlan Ellison and Neil ...
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 ...