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Saturday 11 April 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.
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Ultimate Warrior, The
Film (1975). Warner Bros. Written and directed by Robert Clouse. Cast includes Yul Brynner, Joanna Miles, William Smith and Max von Sydow. 92 minutes. Colour. / New York in 2022 CE is in an advanced state of decay after a man-made biological catastrophe that occurred decades earlier. The leader of a group who have barricaded a street against gangs of thugs roaming outside hires the services of a super-Samurai (Brynner). This was promoted as the first Kung ...
Misha
Working name of US author Misha Nogha Chocholak (1955- ), of Native American (Metis-Cree) background, who began publishing material of genre interest with Prayers of Steel (coll 1989 chap), which assembles some fantasy Poetry; her second collection, Ke-Qua-Hawk-As (coll 1993), similarly incorporates poems, intermixed with stories based on Native American material. Her sf novel, Red Spider White Web ...
Temporal Adventuress
A figure of late twentieth-century Fantastika, where she stands out against the male-dominated storylines that dominated adventure fiction in general, and tales of the fantastic in particular; more recently, women adventurers tend to appear without arousing special attention. The roots of the Adventuress can be traced back to the nineteenth century, where precursors can be detected in characters like H Rider Haggard's ...
Stanley, John
(1940- ) US author, much of whose work has been devoted to nonfiction studies of Cinema Monsters. Creature Features Movie Guide: an A to Z Encyclopedia of the Cinema of the Fantastic; Or, Is There a Mad Doctor in the House? (1981) and its expansions do a competent job of justifying their titles. Stanley is of sf interest for two novels. In World War III (1976), with ...
Nilsson, Peter
(1937-1998) Swedish astronomer and author. Nilsson grew up on a small farm in Möcklehult, a small rural community where the family moved in 1948. His father was a miller, carpenter and farmer, and after elementary school Nilsson started working, but had also begun reading widely and dreamt of becoming a writer and of studying the stars. He began taking correspondence courses and in 1959 graduated from secondary school. After military service, he enrolled at ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...