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Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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De Pizan, Christine
(1364-circa 1430) Italian-born poet and author, in France from early childhood. Her name has been variously spelled: her surname has also been given as de Pisan; she was born Cristina da Pizzano. A Feminist decoding of her life justifies the claim that she is the first European woman to support herself as a professional author (Aphra Behn may be the second). She cannot be profitably added to the roster of ...
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Film (1964). Schenck-Zabel/Paramount. Directed by Byron Haskin. Written by Ib Melchior, John C Higgins, remotely based on Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe. Cast includes Vic Lundin and Paul Mantee. 109 minutes. Colour. / Haskin directed several sf films in the 1950s, including War of the Worlds (1953), and returned to the ...
Danforth, Mildred E
(1900-1985) US author of the routine First Contact tale, From Outer Space (1963). [JC]
Garaga
Japanese Original Video Animation (1989; vt Hyper Psychic Geo Garaga). Based on the Manga by Satomi Mikuriya. Directed and written by Hidemi Kubo. Voice cast includes Toshio Furukawa, Keiko Han, Osamu Kobayashi, Michie Tomizawa and Norio Wakamoto. 100 minutes. Colour. / By 2755 humanity has spread across the galaxy by harnessing Black Holes to create Warp Gates (see Stargates). As it ...
Leisure
The gradual Automation of industry and the progressive reduction of working hours has already extended the amount of leisure time which citizens of the developed nations have, and most later twentieth-century images of the future assume that everyone will have even more of it in times to come. In The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World (1976), the Futures Studies authorities Herman ...
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 ...