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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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Lester, Horace Frank
(1853-1896) Indian-born lawyer and journalist, in UK from an early age, associated with Punch from 1878 until his death; of sf interest is his Future War tale, The Taking of Dover (1888 chap) as H F Lester, in which France mounts a dishonourable but successful Invasion of England. The tale is notable for its early supposition that England may be defeated through subterfuge – five French ...
Mutiny in Outer Space
Film (1965). Hugo Grimaldi Film Productions. Directed by Hugo Grimaldi and Arthur C Pierce (uncredited). Written by Arthur C Pierce. Cast includes Carl Crow, Pamela Curran, James Dobson, Dolores Faith, Richard Garland, Glenn Langan and William Leslie. 82 minutes. Black and white. / Astronauts Gordon Towers (Leslie) and Dan Webber (Crow), returning from the Moon with samples from newly discovered "ice caves", stop at Space Station X-7 (see ...
Invasion of the Neptune Men
Japanese film (1961). Original title Uchū Kaisokusen; vt Invasion from a Planet; vt Space Chief; vt Space Greyhound. Toei Company. Directed by Koji Ota. Written by Shin Morita. Cast includes Sonny Chiba and Kappei Matsumoto. 75 minutes. Black and white. / The six boys (see Children in SF) in a school science club admire their lecturer, the young Scientist Mr ...
Gardner, Erle Stanley
(1889-1970) US lawyer and author, most famous for the eighty-two volume Perry Mason detective series beginning with The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933). He had been extremely prolific from the start of his career around 1921, publishing at least 60 stories and a novel in Pulp magazines in 1933 alone; he spent almost no time at all on sf. His first story of genre interest was "Rain Magic" for (20 October 1928 Argosy ...
Corman, Roger
(1926-2024) US film-maker, a number of whose films are sf. Born in Los Angeles, he graduated in engineering from Stanford University in 1947, and spent a period in the US Navy and a term at Oxford University before going to Hollywood, where he began to write screenplays; his first sale was Highway Dragnet (1954), a picture he coproduced. He soon formed his own company and launched his spectacularly low-budget career. From 1956 he was regularly associated with ...
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 ...