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Wednesday 15 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.
Site updated on 14 April 2026
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Watson, Ian
(1943-2026) UK teacher and author who lectured in English in Tanzania (1965-1967) and Tokyo (1967-1970) before beginning to publish sf with "Roof Garden Under Saturn" for New Worlds in 1969; he then taught Future Studies for six years at Birmingham Polytechnic, taking there one of the first academic courses in sf in the UK; he became a full-time writer in 1976, publishing around 200 short stories since 1969 at a gradually increasing tempo and with visibly ...
DiLouie, Craig
(1967- ) US author who has concentrated for most of his career on Horror and fantasy, beginning with Paranoia (2001), a supernatural thriller involving paranormal powers, the Illuminati, and the predicted assassination of an American president. Interspersed with material of this not unusual sort and of not remarkable calibre are tales of sf interest, the first of these being ...
Battle: Los Angeles
Film (2011). Columbia Pictures in association with Relativity Media presents an Original Film/Legion Entertainment production. Directed by Jonathan Liebesman. Written by Chris Bertolini. Cast includes Aaron Eckhart, Cory Hardrict, Bridget Moynahan, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramón Rodríguez and Will Rothhaar. 116 minutes. Colour. / After Earth's major cities are attacked in a coordinated extraterrestrial Invasion, a unit of marines stranded behind ...
Frankenheimer, John
(1930-2002) US film director. A graduate of the 1950s school of live television drama, Frankenheimer first attracted attention as a film-maker with melodramas centred on youth and social issues: The Young Stranger (1956), The Young Savages (1961), All Fall Down (1961) and The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). However, in his direction of The Manchurian Candidate (1962), ...
Deep Impact
Film (1998). DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures present a Zanuck/Brown production. Directed by Mimi Leder. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin. Cast includes Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman, Téa Leoni and Elijah Wood. 121 minutes. Colour. / In this old-fashioned Disaster movie, humanity's future is threatened by a large Comet on a course to collide with the Earth. ...
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 ...