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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.
Site updated on 9 March 2026
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Protomen, The
US pop-rock band formed in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 2003. Their first two albums, The Protomen (2005) and its prequel Act II: The Father of Death (2009) are concept albums based on the Japanese Videogame Mega Man (1987) and its sequels. It is set in a Dystopian future in which Doctor Light builds the Robots Proto Man and Mega Man to fight the oppressor Doctor Wily ...
Gardner, Craig Shaw
(1949- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Rocket Roll" in Unearth for Spring 1978. He is almost exclusively associated with fantasy, both original titles (chiefly Humour) – beginning with the Ebenezum and Wuntvor humorous romps whose first volume is A Malady of Magics (fixup 1986) [see Checklist below] – and a range of very competent ...
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Videogame (2003). Bioware. Platforms: Win, XBox (2003); Mac (2004). / Knights of the Old Republic is a Computer Role Playing Game using a three-dimensional third person view, set in the Star Wars universe. Its design combines the player created characters and branching plots seen in many Western ...
Looper
Film (2012). FilmDistrict/TriStar Pictures. Directed by Rian Johnson, starting Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. Written by Johnson. Colour. 118 minutes. / It is 2044 and Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, a paid killer who murders people sent back from the further future (thus eliminating any evidence of the crime). Obviously this Time Travel premise makes no sense but it exists to allow director Johnson to explore the possibility of ...
Grimshaw, Robert
(1850-1941) US engineer, inventor and author, much of whose output consists of manuals, including The Locomotive Catechism (1891); his one work of sf interest, Fifty Years Hence: Or What May Be in 1943: A Prophecy Supposed to Be Based on Scientific Deduction by an Improved Graphical Method (1892), is a fictionalized account of a complicated graphic Prediction calculator, by which it is possible to determine that America in 1943 will be ...
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 ...