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Sunday 15 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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Longyear, Barry B
(1942-2025) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by Frederick ...
Ingrey, Derek
(1929-1989) UK scriptwriter for television and film and author whose Post-Holocaust sf novel, Pig on a Lead (1963), describes the dead-end life of the last surviving humans in the UK – two men, who soon kill each other, and a boy Last Man figure, who survives in the company of a young Eve-figure (see Adam and Eve) and the eponymous pig. Told in a remarkable pot pourri of styles, ...
Hickman, Stephen
(1949-2021) US artist working in the fields of both sf and fantasy, credited usually as Stephen Hickman, occasionally as Stephen F Hickman or Steve Hickman, and in a couple of early instances erroneously as Steven Hickman. He attended art school for two years at the Richmond Professional Institute (Virginia Commonwealth University) alongside such future luminaries as Michael W Kaluta, Phil Trumbo and Charles Vess. His ...
Fahrenheit 451
Film (1966). Anglo-Enterprise and Vineyard/Universal. Directed by François Truffaut. Written by Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, based on Fahrenheit 451 (February 1951 Galaxy as "The Fireman"; exp 1953) by Ray Bradbury. Cast includes Julie Christie, Cyril Cusack, Anton Diffring and Oscar Werner. 112 minutes. Colour. / Bradbury's angry parable is about a future Dystopia in ...
Meyer, Nicholas
(1945- ) US screenwriter and sometime director, known especially for Time After Time (1979), for his work on the original-series phase of the Star Trek film cycle, and latterly for his screen adaptations of non-sf works by Philip Roth. Beginning as a publicist, in which capacity he wrote a making-of book for Love Story (1971), he made an amusing debut ...
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 ...