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Sunday 14 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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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Matinee
Film (1993). Universal. Directed by Joe Dante, screenplay Charlie Haas from a story by Jerico and Charlie Haas. Cast includes Simon Fenton, John Goodman, Lisa Jakub, Omri Katz and Cathy Moriarty. 99 minutes. Colour. / Not so much an sf movie as a movie giving a cultural critique of sf movies. The setting is Key West, Florida, during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when nuclear war for a time seemed imminent. Teenager Gene Loomis (Fenton) is new in town, ...
Mr. Nobody
Film (2009). Pan-Européenne in association with Virtual Films and Pathé. Written and directed by Jaco van Dormael. Cast includes Rhys Ifans, Diane Kruger, Jared Leto, Natasha Little, Linh Dan Pham, Sarah Polley, Toby Regbo and Juno Temple. Theatrical cut 137 minutes; director's cut 156 minutes. Colour. / In 2092, when "telomerization" has otherwise arrested ageing and rendered humanity immortal (see Immortality), the last remaining ...
Nelson, Albert D
(? -? ) US author of America Betrayed: Save the Nation (1936), a Near Future Dystopia in which Japan has conquered America. [JC]
Freedman, Nancy
(1920-2010) US actress and author whose sf novel, Joshua Son of None (1973), one of the earliest novels to deal with cloning (see Clones), depicts the intrigue surrounding the childhood and adolescence of Joshua Francis Kellogg, cloned in 1963 from the body of John F Kennedy. The Immortals (1976) is borderline sf. [JC]
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 ...