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Friday 11 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.
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Peel, Charles Victor Alexander
(1869-1931) UK big-game hunter and author, known mostly for martial descriptions of his exploits; of sf interest is The Ideal Island: A Romance (1927), in which a number of nubile young couples establish on an uncharted Island a Utopia one of whose precepts is universal nudity. Peel founded a museum in Oxford to mount his trophies. [JC]
Schachner, Nat
(1895-1955) US chemist, lawyer and author, known mainly for biographies of US historical figures, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Tower of Evil" with Arthur Leo Zagat (it was also his first publication) for Wonder Stories Quarterly, Summer 1930. His collaboration with Zagat lasted over a year, all Schachner's first eleven stories being done with him, including a novel-length tale, ...
Iron Man 3
Film (2013). Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures and DMG Entertainment present a Marvel Studios production. Directed by Shane Black. Written by Black & Drew Pearce, based on the Lee/Kirby/Lieber/Heck comic. Cast includes Don Cheadle, Robert Downey Jr, Jon Favreau, Rebecca Hall, Ben Kingsley, Gwyneth Paltrow and Guy Pearce. 130 minutes. Colour, 3D (converted). / While suffering post-traumatic stress following the events of ...
Dane, Clemence
Pseudonym of UK playwright and author Winifred Ashton (1888-1965), best remembered for her many stage plays and for Broome Stages (1931), a tale of the Theatre. Plays of fantasy interest include Adam's Opera: The Text of a Play ... Set to Music by Richard Addinsell (performed 1928; 1928), an expressionistically Equipoisal musical in which the Sleeping Beauty is awoken by a querulously idealistic Adam (see ...
Kawamata Chiaki
(1948- ) Japanese author whose debut work "Shita" ["Tongue"] (January 1972 NW-SF) was published while he was still working as a copywriter at the Advertising agency Hakuhodo. In the same year, he began writing SF criticism with "Ashita wa Docchi da!" ["Which Way is Tomorrow?"], which ran until 1975 in S-F Magazine and was subsequently collated in Yume no Kotoba, Kotoba no Yume ["Words of ...
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 ...