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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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Grosse Verhau, Der
Film (1970; vt The Big Mess). Kairos Film. Produced and directed by Alexander Kluge. Written by Kluge, Wolfgang Mai. Cast includes Silvia Forsthofer, Siegfried Graue, Vincenz Starr and Maria Sterr. 86 minutes. Black and white and colour. / This West German comedy is by a director – a leading light of the German New Wave – whose apprenticeship was with Fritz Lang. It is an amusing ...
Year 24 Group
["Nijūyo-nen-gumi"] Critical shorthand used in Japanese Manga Fandom and academia to describe the community of female creators who transformed girls' comics in the 1970s, making a striking and enduring impact on multiple genres, including sf (see Women SF Writers). The name derives from the happenstance that several of the prime movers in the field were born in or around ...
Charrette, Robert N
(1953- ) US author and Game designer, often as Bob Charrette. He co-designed the sf Role Playing Games Aftermath (1981) – with a Post-Holocaust setting – and Shadowrun (1989). His fiction consists mostly of sf and fantasy Ties, including game novelizations for the ...
Wheatley, Dennis
(1897-1977) UK author, in active service during both World War One and World War Two, in the latter conflict with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve 1941-1944; active from around 1925. He was a prolific and extremely popular author of many espionage thrillers and historical romances, although the best of his work – and since his death the only category of his large oeuvre to be read at all widely – consists of ...
Hammill, Peter
British composer and musician, best known as the lead singer of Van der Graaf Generator. His solo releases, most of them similar to the prog-rock complexities of his group work, have been varied and, often, rather wayward. Popular success has eluded him although he inspires great devotion in his fans. "Imperial Zeppelin", on Hammill's first solo album Fool's Mate (1971), is an unusual example of steampunk SF-pop, possibly indebted to ...
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 ...