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Thursday 12 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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Houghton, Claude
Working name of UK author and poet Claude Houghton Oldfield (1889-1961), known primarily outside the sf field. Unfit for active service in World War One, he served in the Admiralty. Some pining frustration at a missed destiny can be detected in the poems assembled as his first book, The Phantom Host and Other Verses (coll 1917 chap); the Pastoral calm depicted in the titular verse-drama from ...
Sloane, William M
(1906-1974) US playwright, publisher and author who also published as by William Milligan; his interest in the occult was reflected in his sf novels, To Walk the Night (1937; rev 1954) and The Edge of Running Water (1939; vt The Unquiet Corpse 1956), both later assembled as The Rim of Morning (omni 1964; with introduction by Stephen King 2015); along with one story, "Let Nothing You Dismay" ...
Bunch, Chris
(1943-2005) US screenwriter and author, in the latter capacity almost exclusively of series; his first two series – the Sten sequence of Military SF adventures beginning with Sten (1982) and ending with Empire's End (1993), and the Anteros fantasy sequence – were both written with Allan Cole. The first of these at least is thought mainly to express Cole's way with things, ...
Falling Skies
US tv series (2011-2015). Dreamworks Television 2011-2013, Amblin Television 2014-2015. Created by Robert Rodat. Producers include Greg Beeman, Rodat, Steven Spielberg, and Graham Yost. Directors include Beeman, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan and Fred Toye. Writers include Rodat, Melinda Hsu Taylor and Yost. Cast includes Noah Wyle as Tom Mason, Will Patton as Captain Weaver, Moon Bloodgood as Dr Anne Glass, Peter Shinkoda as Dai, Mpho Koaho as Anthony, ...
Thompson, W R
(1955- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Perceptions" in Analog for November 1983, and who has published several Hard SF stories, often in the same magazine, over the past thirty years. His only series are Ties to the Star Trek universe, in the Star: The Next Generation sequence, beginning with ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...