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Sunday 12 April 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 6 April 2026
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Death Line
Film (1972; vt Raw Meat US). K-L Productions. Directed by Gary Sherman. Written by Ceri Jones, from a story by Sherman. Cast includes Hugh Armstrong, Sharon Gurney, David Ladd, Donald Pleasence and Norman Rossington. 87 minutes. Colour. / In the late nineteenth century a group of construction workers building an extension to London's Underground railway system are buried in a cave-in. In the present, late-night travellers at Russell Square tube ...
Jonbar Point
Term occasionally used in sf criticism for a crucial forking-place in Time, whose manipulation via Time Travel or alteration by sheer happenstance may radically affect the future that follows, typically spawning an Alternate History. "Jonbar hinge", "nexus point" and "point of divergence" have also been used synonymously. / The headword name derives from Jack ...
Tumannost' Andromedy
Film (1968; vt The Andromeda Nebula; vt Andromeda the Mysterious; vt The Cloud of Andromeda). Dovzhenko Studio. Directed by Eugene Sherstobytov. Written by Sherstobytov, Vladimir Dmitrievski, based on Tumannost' Andromedy (1958) by Ivan Yefremov. Cast includes Viya Artmane, Nikolai Kriukov and Sergei Stoliarov. 85 minutes, cut to 77 minutes. Colour. / A disappointingly polemical Russian adaptation of Yefremov's much ...
Hurley, Andrew Michael
(1975- ) UK author, almost entirely of Horror, beginning with The Loney (2014); lecturer in creative writing (fiction) at Manchester Metropolitan University from 2016. He is of sf interest for the Equipoisal Barrowbeck (Radio version 2022 BBC4 as "Voices in the Valley"; coll of linked stories 2024), set in the low-lying village of Barrowbeck on the ...
Sedia, Ekaterina
(1970- ) USSR-born biologist and author, in America from 1984; she began publishing work of genre interest with "Alphabet Angels" with David Bartell in Analog for March 2005. Though most of her work is Fantasy, sf topoi thread through much of her fiction to date, usually as elements in her complex framings of the contemporary urban environment, framings which tend to exclude the Vampires ...
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 ...