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Wednesday 16 July 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.
Site updated on 14 July 2025
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Supernatural Creatures
This entry provides an overview of the treatment of supernatural beings in sf, some of the more important, interesting or simply popular subsets of such entities also being given separate entries: Gods and Demons, Golem, Poltergeists, Shapeshifters, Vampires, Werewolves and ...
Venus
Because Earth's inner neighbour presented a bright and featureless face to early astronomers, it became something of a mystery planet. Nineteenth-century astronomers and early-twentieth-century sf writers generally imagined that, as the featureless face was a permanent cloud layer, the surface beneath must be warm and wet; the Venus of the imagination became a planet of vast oceans (perhaps with no land at all) or sweltering jungles. In the 1960s, however, probes revealed that Venus has no ...
Wilkinson, Vernon
(1916-1988) New Zealand teacher and author of various works of nonfiction about the place of New Zealand in the world. Of sf interest is After The Bomb: Flight to Utopia (1984), set on a distant Near Future Earth two centuries after World War Three, as the occupants of a returning Spaceship discover, a Utopian civilization has evolved, though the ...
Sullivan, Mary W
(? - ) US author of Young Adult fiction whose Earthquake 2099 (1982) is a fairly early example of the tale whose young protagonist, trapped in a Dystopian City-state, must eventually learn to survive in the surrounding wilderness; in this case, the eponymous Disaster provides her with the chance to grow up. [JC]
Strange Invaders
Film (1983). EMI Films/Orion/A Michael Laughlin Production. Directed by Michael Laughlin. Written by William Condon, Laughlin. Cast includes Nancy Allen, Paul Le Mat, Michael Lerner, Fiona Lewis, Diana Scarwid and Wallace Shawn. 93 minutes. Colour. / A very agreeable pastiche of movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) (see Paranoia). The prologue shows a ...
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 ...