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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.
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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 ...
Tarzan Films
Films about Tarzan are of varying interest, and are treated accordingly. Early examples made some pretence of following the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs; later films abandoned that pretence. Several actors played Tarzan himself. The most famous were Johnny Weissmuller (9 to 24) and Lex Barker (25 to 29). For further Jungle Movies see Bomba Films and The ...
Jones, David
(1895-1974) UK painter and author whose written works, widely and properly characterized as High Modernist, are not describable as sf, nor as being Equipoisal in anything like a twenty-first century sense, but which have a central importance as examples of the epic grasp of the world demonstrated when the magic-literalism of Fantastika is wrought to its uttermost as Poetry. Jones's first work of ...
Návštěva z Vesmíru
["Visit from Space"] Czech (see Czech and Slovak SF) tv film (1977). Ostrava studio, Czechoslovak Television. Directed by Otakar Kosko. Written by Drahoslav Makovicka, based on Roadside Picnic (1972; trans 1977) by Arkady and Boris Strugatski. Cast includes Zdeněk Hradilák as Professor Pillman, Přemysl Matoušek as MrchoŽrout (literally "scavenger", but ...
Posnick, Paul
(? - ) US author of a Near Future sf novel, Weather War (1978) with Leonard Leokum, in which the major powers, as World War Three threatens, explore the possibilities of using the technology of Weather Control against one another. [JC]
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 ...