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Tuesday 10 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
West, Lindsay
Pseudonym of US author Nancy Weber (1942- ), married to Charles Platt (1977-circa 1980), who writes romances as by Jennifer Rose. The Empire of the Ants (1977) is a Tie novelizing The Empire of the Ants (1977; vt H G Wells' Empire of the Ants) directed by Bert I Gordon. [JC]
Morons from Outer Space
Film (1985). Directed by Mike Hodges. Written by Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith; developed by Bob Mercer. Cast includes Paul Bown, Griff Rhys Jones, Dinsdale Landen, Jimmy Nail, Joanne Pearce and Mel Smith. 97 minutes, cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / Very stupid Aliens (identical in appearance and behaviour to humans) have rented a Spaceship to go on holiday. They crashland on a UK motorway and later become media stars. This ...
Johal, Gurnaik
(1998- ) UK author, active from around 2020; the tales assembled in his first collection, We Move (coll 2022), convey essentially nonfantastic narrative through complex devices – including multiple story lines delivered with apothegmatic concision – that hint towards a wider gaze (see Fantastika). This is provided in his first novel, Saraswati (2025), much of it set in the ...
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Film (2014). Twentieth Century Fox in association with TSG Entertainment. Directed by Matt Reeves. Written by Mark Bomback and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, based on characters created by Jaffa & Silver. Cast includes Jason Clarke, Toby Kebbell, Karin Konoval, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Andy Serkis, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Nick Thurston. 130 minutes. Colour, 3D. / Ten years after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes ...
Haseley, Dennis
(1950- ) US psychotherapist and author who specialized for many years in picture books, the most ambitious of which – like Ghost Catcher (graph 1989), about a man without a shadow who retrieves people from the brink of death – are of general interest. Typically of this author, Dr Gravity (1992), a Young Adult novel, describes the consequences on others of exceptional individuals, in this case a man ...
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 ...