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Tuesday 24 June 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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Riley, Frank
Working name of Frank Rhylick (1915-1996), US author who is mainly known for collaborating with Mark Clifton on They'd Rather Be Right (August-November 1954 Astounding; edited version 1957; vt The Forever Machine 1958; text restored under original title 1981), the Hugo-winning conclusion to Clifton's Bossy series about an advanced Computer ...
Engelhardt, Frederick
(? - ) Author whose first published story was the serialized novella "General Swamp, C.I.C." (August-September 1939 Astounding), a routine adventure in which human colonies on Venus (see Colonization of Other Worlds) rebel against Earth. Ten further stories, not all sf, appeared in various Pulp magazines including The ...
Black Terror, The
US Comic (1943-1949). Nedor Publishing Company/Visual Editions Inc. 27 issues. Artists include Al Camy, Mort Meskin, Ed Moritz, Jerry Robinson and Alex Schomburg. Scriptwriters include Donald Bayne Hobart, Richard Hughes and Charles S Strong. Originally 68 pages, then declining until #26 and #27 had only 36. Usually four long strips per issue, a couple with five, whilst #26 and #27 had three; there would also be at least one text ...
Life Returns
Film (1935). Scienart Pictures/Universal Pictures. Produced by Lou L Ostrow. Directed by Eugene Frenke and James P Hogan (not the sf author). Written by L Wolfe Gilbert, John F Goodrich, Arthur T Horman and Mary McCarthy, from a story by Hogan. Cast includes George P Breakston, Valerie Hobson, Onslow Stevens and Lois Wilson. 63 minutes, sometimes cut to 60 minutes. Black and white. / Dr John Kendrick (Stevens) has spent his life working on a method of reviving the dead (see ...
Mayhew, Julie
(? - ) UK actor, playwright and author whose first novel, the Young Adult Red Ink (2013), engages peripherally with supernatural material. Her second novel, The Big Lie (2015), is a Hitler Wins tale set in an Alternate History Britain under German rule around 2014, and conflates its protagonist's coming of age with the gradual ...
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 ...