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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 ...
Coates, John
(1912-1963) UK playwright and author, not to be confused with the English tenor John Coates (1865-1941); his Tomorrow's Child: A Comedy in Three Acts (performed 1946; 1947 chap) is set in the over-disciplined Near Future society of 1965 Britain. Here Today (1949) is a Time Travel tale about a man who claims to have wooed Jane Austen. [JC]
Wow Comics
US Comic (1940-1948). 69 issues. Fawcett Publications. Artists include Ed Ashe, Jack Binder, Dick MacKay, Carl Pfeufer, C R Schaare, Marc Swayze and Bert Whitman. Script writers include Otto Binder (see Eando Binder), Dick Kraus, Dick MacKay and Joe Millard. Initially 68 pages; gradual reduction to 36 for #30-#41; 52 from #42. The comic began with 9 long strips, but from #6 it usually had only 4-5. Also ...
Maps: Legendary Space Wanderers
Japanese Original Video Animation (OVA) (1987; original title Mappusu: Densetsu no Masayoeru seijintachi; vt Maps; vt Star Quest). Studio Gallop. Based on the Manga by Yuichi Hasegawa. Directed by Keiji Hayakawa. Written by Kenji Terada. Voice cast includes Akira Kamiya, Yūko Minaguchi, Hidekatsu Shibata, Mayumi Tanaka and Hiromi Tsuru. 52 minutes. Colour. / 16 year old Gen Tokishima (Tanakais) is abducted ...
Homer
(circa 800 BCE-circa 700 BCE) The most famous of early Greek poets, whether or not one or more individuals, or a guild of homers who recited poetry, and whose birth and death dates remain speculative; his or their birth and death may have occurred between the dates given above. Samuel Butler, in The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897), argued for female authorship of the Odyssey, and Robert ...
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 ...