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Wednesday 17 June 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.
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Yolen, Jane
(1939-2026) US author, partially resident in Scotland, who began publishing poems and articles when still in college, and who first came to notice with books for children, the first of many being Pirates in Petticoats (1963). Of her circa 460 titles, many of which won awards in her field, most were for children (see listing below for some of these), many of them being picture books for younger children; most of her adult fiction, of which she wrote relatively little, was ...
Lorrain, Jean
Pseudonym of French poet, playwright and author Paul Alexandre Martin Duval (1855-1906), active (but already in ill health) from the early 1880s. The contes cruels and fantasticated fever-dreams for which he remains best known, and which established him as a central exponent (and dweller within) of late nineteenth-century Decadence, edge occasionally into sf topoi, but are more easily thought of in terms of a loosened ...
Blue Demon: El Demonio Azul
Mexican film (1965). Filmica Vergara S.A. Directed by Chano Urueta. Written by Fernando Osés and Rafael García Travesi. Cast includes Jaime Fernández, Cesar Gay, Guillermo Hernandez, Altia Michel, Alejandro Moreno, Mario Orea, Fernando Osés and Rosa María Vázquez. 77 minutes. Black and white. / We see two lovers killed by a Werewolf. The doctor (Gay) conducting the autopsy concludes ...
Venter, Eben
(1954- ) South African author, in Australia from 1986. His fiction is almost entirely nonfantastic, much of it depicting, with some autobiographical elements, the ethical and political dilemmas that might characteristically confront a nonconforming white man born and raised Afrikaaner in a dissolving world. Of sf interest is Horrelpoot (2006; trans Luke Stubbs as Trencherman 2008), set in a devastated Near Future ...
Blue Thunder
Film (1983). Rastar/Gordon Carroll Productions. Directed John Badham. Written by Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby. Cast includes Candy Clark, Malcolm McDowell, Warren Oates, Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern. 110 minutes. Colour. / Borderline sf set in a very Near-Future Los Angeles, Blue Thunder tells the story of Murphy (Scheider), a helicopter-based police officer, asked to try out a new supercopter: it can see through ...
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 ...