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Sunday 7 December 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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Powerpuff Girls, The
US animated tv series (1998-2005). Hanna-Barbera Cartoons (1998-2001); Cartoon Network Studios (2002-2005). Created by Craig McCracken. Directors include John McIntyre, Craig McCracken, Randy Myers and Genndy Tartakovsky. Writers include John McIntyre, Amy Keating Rogers and Chris Savino. Voice cast includes Catherine Cavadini, Elizabeth Daily, Roger L. Jackson, Tom Kane, Tom ...
Belden, Wilanne Schneider
(1925- ) US author, mostly of Young Adult titles, whose Mind sequence – comprising Mind-Call (1981), Mind-Hold (1987) and Mind-Find (1988) – places a moderately dysfunctional family with Psi Powers in a Post-Holocaust environment, for they live in California after a vast earthquake has essentially destroyed the ...
Banville, John
(1945- ) Irish author active from an early age, his first book being a collection of stories, Long Langkin (coll 1970), followed by Nightspawn (1971), each of these nonfantastic titles focusing variously on twins and their complex interplayings, a focus which would characterize much of his work from this point; he also writes nonfantastic crime novels [not listed here], the early titles as by Benjamin Black, most of them making up the ...
WALL-E
Animated film (2008). Pixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Andrew Stanton. Written by Stanton and Jim Reardon, based on a story by Stanton and Pete Docter. Cast includes Ben Burtt, Jeff Garlin, Elissa Knight, Sigourney Weaver. 95 minutes. Colour. / On the page it sounds implausibly avant-garde: a love story between two Robots aimed at children and told through mime. On the screen, however, it was a stunning critical and commercial ...
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 ...