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Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
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Williams, Henry Livingston
(1842-? ) US playwright, translator and author, of sf interest for two examples of the Dime-Novel SF Edisonade, in the Tom Edison, Jr sequence usually written by Philip Reade: Tom Edison Jr's Air-Ship in Australia; Or, in Search of a Golden Treasure (1892 chap), which features Edison and his submersible Airship in adventures ...
Monsters [film]
Film (2010). Vertigo Films. Written and directed by Gareth Edwards. Cast includes Whitney Able and Scoot McNairy. 94 minutes. Colour. / A returning probe carrying samples from the geothermal oceans of Europa (see Jupiter) has crashed in central America, which is now infested with giant cephalopods in an international quarantine zone. Cynical photojournalist McNairy is reluctantly charged with delivering his boss's daughter (Able) to safety in the US before ...
MacCloud, Malcolm
(? - ) US author of two sf juveniles for Young Adult readers. The Tera Beyond (1981) is a thriller set on the planet Tera, where a student makes the Discovery, at the risk of his freedom, that microbes are inherently dual in nature, suggesting the existence of Parallel Worlds. Rather similarly, though less plausibly, A Gift of Mirrorvax ...
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Film (1964). Schenck-Zabel/Paramount. Directed by Byron Haskin. Written by Ib Melchior, John C Higgins, remotely based on Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe. Cast includes Vic Lundin and Paul Mantee. 109 minutes. Colour. / Haskin directed several sf films in the 1950s, including War of the Worlds (1953), and returned to the ...
Flynn, John L
(1954- ) US academic and author, mostly of nonfiction studies in sf Cinema, including Dissecting Aliens: Terror in Space (1995), on the Alien sequence of films, and War of the Worlds: From Wells to Spielberg (2005). Short fiction has been assembled in Visions in Light and Shadow (coll 2001); in his awkward first novel, The Jovian Dilemma (2006), a corrupt ...
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 ...