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Sunday 7 December 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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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Yesterday Machine, The
Film (1963). Carter Film Productions. Directed, produced and written by Russ Marker. Cast includes James Britton, Carol Gilley, Jack Herman, Tim Holt, Linda Jenkins, Robert Bob Kelly, Ann Pellegrino, Olga Powell, Jay Ramsey, Bill Thurman and Charles Young. 85 minutes. Black and white. / Ex-Nazi Scientist Professor Ernst Von Hauser (Herman), based with his henchmen near a small town in Texas, has perfected Time Travel and ...
Walton, David
(1975- ) US physicist and author who has claimed that his Christian faith infuses but does not direct the arguments made in the Hard SF novels he has published to date; he has clearly distinguished between the theological truth of the Bible (for Christians) and the culture-bound language which seems to contradict a modern science, for instance the theory of Evolution. Walton began to publish work of genre interest ...
Hussey, David
(1903-1959) UK author of a Utopia, No Sting, No Honey (1938), set on a South Pacific Island where women, following rigid Eugenic precepts, have transformed themselves into the dominant sex (see Feminism); the society itself is organized like a bee hive. Some of the Club Stories assembled in Fort Carteret (coll of linked stories ...
Goldberg, Marshall
(1930-2005) US physician, teacher and author (sometimes as Marshall Goldberg, M D) of medical thrillers, some of which move into the Near Future, including Disposable People (1980) with Kenneth Kay, about a disease which suddenly ravages America, and Nerve (1981). He should not be confused with his father, the football player Marshall Goldberg (1917-2006). [JC]
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...