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Wednesday 16 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.
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Abbey, Lloyd
(1943- ) Canadian teacher and author, much of whose poetry dramatizes the natural world, as does his sf novel The Last Whales (1989), in which whales (and some dolphins who have escaped from their African-based military training academy) live realistically conceived (non-speaking) lives in the oceans of a Near Future post-Disaster world. The tale advances at a dignified pace; it does not end in a ...
Lost Missile, The
Film (1958). William Berke Productions, Inc/United Artists. Produced by William A Berke and Leo Gordon. Directed by Lester William Berke. Written by Jerome Bixby, and John McPartland from an original story by Lester William Berke. Special effects by Jack Glass. Cast includes Robert Loggia, Ellen Parker and Phillip Pine. Narrator: Lawrence Dobkin. 70 minutes. Black and white. / An unidentified missile or missile-like object is detected in near-Earth ...
O'Duffy, Eimar
(1893-1935) Irish dentist, political economist and author whose The Wasted Island (1919), though couched in apocalyptic tones, deals strictly with the historical Ireland during the years leading up to the Easter Uprising of 1916; Bricriu's Feast: A Comedy in Three Acts with an Epilogue (1919 chap), a play, is fantasy. O'Duffy moved to England in 1926, where he composed his best-known work, the mock-epic-Irish Cuanduine sequence comprising ...
Strange Fantasy
One of the many reprint Digest-size magazines published by Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing Co; compiled anonymously by Cohen. Six issues, three in 1969 (#8-#10) and three in 1970 (#11-#13). The strange numbering is related to the temporary death in 1969 of Science Fiction Classics after #8, but Strange Fantasy is not simply a variant title of the latter, which began again in 1971 with ...
Martin, Troy Kennedy
(1932-2009) Scottish-born scriptwriter, in England from childhood, best known for non-fantastic work such as the BBC police procedural series Z Cars (1962-1978), which he created and for which he supplied scripts intermittently; brother of Ian Kennedy Martin. Some of the Satirical nihilism of his script for the film Kelly's Heroes (1970), directed by Brian G Hutton, disappeared when the studio ...
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 ...