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Thursday 10 July 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 7 July 2025
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Bartlett, Claire
(? - ) UK author of several Radio plays and Ties to the Doctor Who franchise, usually in collaboration with Iain McLaughlin; she began to publish work of genre interest with "The Time Lord's Story" (with McLaughlin) in Doctor Who: Short Trips: Repercussions (anth 2004) edited by Gary Russell. ...
Barrowcliffe, Mark
(1964- ) UK author who also writes as by Mark Alder and as by M D Lachlan. His early novels, beginning with Girlfriend 44 (2000) and all under his own name, are nonfantastic, though The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing up Strange (2007) is an amusing memoir, focusing on his adolescent obsession with the Role Playing Game Dungeons & Dragons. / Most of Barrowcliffe's pseudonymous ...
Oldfield, Mike
(1953- ) English composer and performer, whose multi-layered, multi-instrumental and usually vocal-free work has enjoyed considerable commercial success. His first and perhaps most influential release, Tubular Bells (1973) was a fluently inventive, varied and musically charming piece, not least in its cod-caveman interlude "Piltdown Man". Of his many dozen subsequent releases, Oldfield's most straightforwardly science-fictional album is ...
Parasite Murders, The
Film (1974; vt They Came from Within; vt Shivers). Cinepix/Canadian Film Development Corp. Written and directed by David Cronenberg. Cast includes Paul Hampton, Lynn Lowry, Alan Migicovsky, Joe Silver and Barbara Steele. 87 minutes, cut to 77 minutes. Colour. / In an attempt to develop a beneficial symbiote, a scientist creates a parasite (see Parasitism and Symbiosis) that, when it ...
Satterfield, Susan
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Change" in Eldritch Tales for Fall 1993, and whose novella, Mirror Images (2002 chap), presents a nightmare world or Dimension in which everything is seen anew, to Satirical effect. [JC]
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...