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Saturday 8 August 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 3 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Runaway
Film (1984). Tri-Star/Delphi III. Directed by Michael Crichton. Written by Crichton. Cast includes Kirstie Alley, Cynthia Rhodes, Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons. 97 minutes. Colour. / Crichton again exercises his love/hate relationship with Machines in this predictable but exciting thriller about the policeman Sergeant Jack R Ramsay (Selleck), partnered with Karen Thompson (Rhodes) whose job it is to deal with defective ...
Gibbins, David
(1962- ) Canadian archaeologist and author, partly resident in the UK, of whose novels Atlantis (2005) is of sf interest, as the rediscovered Atlantis proves to contain secrets of ancient science of planetary importance, and likely to cause a Holocaust, a threat dealt with in The Last Gospel (2008) and The Gods of Atlantis (2011). ...
Wasp Woman, The
Film (1959). Filmgroup/Allied Artists. Produced and directed by Roger Corman. Written by Leo Gordon, based on a story by Kinta Zertuche. Cast includes Susan Cabot and Michael Mark. 73 minutes. Black and white. / One of Roger Corman's more routine efforts, this may have been rushed out to capitalize on the publicity received by The Fly (1958). Cabot plays well the ageing cosmetics executive who, in a ...
FEAR: First Encounter Assault Recon
Videogame (2005). Monolith Productions (MP). Designed by Craig Hubbard. Platforms: Win (2005); XB360 (2006); PS3 (2007). / FEAR is a First Person Shooter which merges the psychological horror of the Japanese film Ring (1998) with the kinetic violence of John Woo's Hong Kong action film Hard Boiled (1992). The player character is a new ...
McDermott, Shannon
(? - ) US author who identifies as Christian (see Religion); her first novel, The Last Heir (2009), which is set in a world partially described through generalized instancings from the SF Megatext, focuses on a dynastic dispute. After several fantasy novels, she returned to sf with the ongoing Eternities sequence beginning with The Time Door (2024), set on a ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...