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Saturday 14 March 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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Roberts, Bechhofer
(1894-1949) UK journalist and author, in active service during World War One. He wrote two thematically connected Near Future spoofs on bureaucracy: The Birdseed Pool (1940), where the chair of a Government control board, appointed through nepotism, fails to rationalize the market for birdseed as World War Two deepens; and the similar Sunrise in the West: An Absurdity ...
Butterfly Effect, The
Film (2004). New Line Cinema presents a Benderspink/FilmEngine production. Directed by J Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress. Written by Gruber, Bress. Cast includes John Patrick Amedori, Irene Gorovaia, Elden Henson, Ashton Kutcher, William Lee Scott, Amy Smart and Melora Walters. 113 minutes (115 minutes director's cut). Colour. / Young Evan Treborn, "Event Reborn" (Kutcher, Amedori), has a traumatic childhood in which he suffers periodic "blackouts" in times of stress, having no memory ...
Asaro, Catherine
(1955- ) US physicist, with a PhD in Chemical Physics from Harvard University, author, and editor who for a short period produced a Semiprozine paying professional rates, Mindspark, with five issues between August 1993 and Fall 1994. At about the same time she began publishing work of genre interest with "Dance in Blue" in Christmas Forever (anth 1993) edited by David G Hartwell. She ...
Man Made Monster
US film (1941; vt Atomic Monster). Universal Pictures. Associate Producer Jack Bernhard. Directed by George Waggner. Written by Waggner from the story "The Electric Man" by Harry Essex (credited as H J Essex), Sid Schwartz and Len Golos. Cast includes Frank Albertson, Lionel Atwill, Lon Chaney Jr, Samuel S Hinds and Anne Nagel. 59 minutes. Black and white. / "Big" Dan McCormick (Chaney) – a carnival sideshow performer as Dynamo Dan, the Electric Man – survives a ...
Dearmer, Geoffrey
(1893-1996) UK author, and a World War One poet of some note, his best early work being collected in Poems (coll 1918 chap), which he much later reassembled, with later material, as A Pilgrim's Song (coll 1993). He is now also remembered for his work (1936-1950) as an Examiner of Plays (which is to say censor) for the Lord Chancellor's Office, and for an incident in 1942, when he thought he heard the word "bugger" spoken in a ...
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 ...