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Wednesday 17 June 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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Yolen, Jane
(1939-2026) US author, partially resident in Scotland, who began publishing poems and articles when still in college, and who first came to notice with books for children, the first of many being Pirates in Petticoats (1963). Of her circa 460 titles, many of which won awards in her field, most were for children (see listing below for some of these), many of them being picture books for younger children; most of her adult fiction, of which she wrote relatively little, was ...
Farren, Mick
Working name of Michael A Farren (1943-2013), UK author, journalist and rock musician who was first active as a member of a band, The Deviants, 1967-1969 (revived several times, most recently in 2011); he then edited the underground paper IT 1970-1973 and founded the underground comic Nasty Tales – prosecuted for obscenity in a well-known trial – in the pages of which, with Chris Rowley and Chris Welch, he produced a comic strip with sf content, ...
Superman Returns
Film (2006). Warner Bros. Pictures. Directed by Bryan Singer. Written by Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris. Cast includes Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Brandon Routh and Kevin Spacey. 154 minutes. Colour. / Superman's return to cinema largely ignores developments in the comics; instead Superman Returns reverently emulates the original Superman (1978). Set after ...
Koch, Eric
(1919-2018) German-born broadcaster, Television producer, academic and author, in UK from 1935, in Canada from 1940, several of whose novels are of some sf interest. In The French Kiss: A Tongue in Cheek Political Fantasy (1969), set in a Near-Future Canada threatened – as usual – by separatism, a Reincarnated colleague of Napoleon muses on de Gaulle's similarity to the ...
Flytrap
US Amateur Magazine published and edited by Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw from Oakland, California, via the Tropism Press imprint in US quarto format, usually around 40 pages. It was started simply for fun, with a main run of ten issues, usually two per year tied in with one or another sf Convention (where most of its 200 or so sales were made), from November 2003 to November 2008. Several years ...
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 ...