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Monday 14 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 14 July 2025
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Boswell, James
(1906-1971) New Zealand-born painter and illustrator, in the UK from 1925, who sometimes signed his work Bos or Buchan; he was a member of the London Group of painters intermittently from 1927, where his passionate socialism had an ongoing impact on his contemporaries. His work shows the influence of German graphic artists like Georg Grosz and the British James Fitton (1899-1982); in turn, he influenced younger artists like Ronald Searle and Paul Hogarth. A suite of eight vividly premonitory ...
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Film (1989). Interscope Communications/Soisson-Murphey/De Laurentiis. Director Stephen Herek. Written by Chris Matheson, Ed Solomon. Cast includes Robert V Barron, Terry Camilleri, George Carlin, Al Leong, Keanu Reeves, Jane Wiedlin and Alex Winter. 89 minutes. Colour. / Because the tranquillity of future life depends on the cultural changes brought about by a late-twentieth-century rock band called Wyld Stallyns, an emissary from the future named Rufus (Carlin) undergoes ...
O'Brien, Caragh M
(? - ) US author who also writes as by Sierra Greer; her Young Adult Birthmarked Trilogy, comprising Birthmarked (2010), Prized (2011) and Promised (2012), begins in a Near Future American Dystopia where women, treated as obscenely fruitful breeders, are retained in oppressive Keeps. ...
Special Bulletin
Made-for-tv film (1983). NBC. Directed by Edward Zwick. Written by Marshall Herskovitz. Cast includes Christopher Allport, David Clennon, Ed Flanders, David Rasche and Kathryn Walker. 92 minutes. Colour. / An unnervingly effective pseudodocumentary, this presents itself as television coverage of an escalating terrorist crisis in Charleston, where a dissident group of nuclear Scientists and peace activists threatens to set off an atomic bomb in the ...
Whip Hand, The
Film (1951; vt The Enemy Within). RKO Radio Pictures. Produced by Lewis J Rachmil. Directed by William Cameron Menzies. Written by George Bricker, and Frank L Moss from a story by Roy Hamilton, and Stanley Rubin. Cast includes Carla Balenda, Edgar Barrier, Raymond Burr (Steve Loomis), Elliot Reid and Otto Waldis (Dr Wilhelm Bucholtz). 82 minutes. Black and white. / While on a fishing trip to Minnesota, magazine writer Matt Corbin (Reid) stumbles across a lake where all the ...
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 ...