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Monday 15 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 11 December 2025
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Varley, John
(1947-2025) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Picnic on Nearside" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 1974, and who was soon thought to be the most significant new sf writer of the late 1970s. He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments like cloning (see Clones) and Identity Transfer, many of ...
Terra
Common item of sf Terminology. In sf the Latin form is that conventionally given to the name of our planet, since Earth is ambiguous, meaning both the planet itself and soil – a point frequently made when Earth is sought in E C Tubb's Dumarest sequence: "As well call a planet Dirt, or Soil!" (The irony here is that the same ambiguity exists in Latin, where terra can mean anything from soil or the ground, as in ...
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus
(1929-2022) German poet, critic, editor, publisher, translator and author who also wrote as by Elisabeth Ambras, Giorgio Pellizzi, Linda Quilt and Andres Thalmayr, active from around 1950. Primarily a poet, he wrote at least one adult novel, plus several for child and Young Adult audiences. Of the latter, Der Zahlenteufel (1997; trans by Michael Henry Heim as The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure 2000) ...
Bantock, Nick
(1949- ) UK artist, illustrator and author, in Canada from 1988; active as an illustrator from around 1962, with at least 300 covers credited to him, some as by Nick Fox. Much of his work, which is either collage-like or consists of actual (though clearly massaged) collages, conveys a sense that narrative energies are suppressed within the image, and threaten to become explicitly storyable, like a Cabinet of Curiosities jinxed into life: hints that his work contains ...
Robot Detective
Japanese tv series (1973); original title Robotto Keiji. Toei Company. Created by Shotaro Ishinomori. Directed by Atsuo Okunaka, Itaru Orita and Issaku Uchida. Written by Masaru Igami, Shoichi Nakahara and Shozo Uehara. Cast includes Shūsei Nakamura, Kaku Takashina and Jirō Yabuki. 26 25-minute episodes. Colour. / Veteran Detective Shiba (Takashina) is not pleased to be transferred to the Special ...
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 ...