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Monday 16 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.
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Trudno byt' bogom
1. Film (1989; vt Hard To Be a God). Dovzhenko Studio/Halleluya Film GMBH/VO Sovexportfilm. Directed by Peter Fleischmann. Written by Fleischmann, Jean-Claude Carriere, Dal Orlov, based on Trudno byt' bogom (1964; trans as Hard to be a God 1973) by Arkady and Boris Strugatski. Cast includes Andrei Boltnev, Edward Dzentara, Alexander Filippenko, Ann Gautier, Mikhail Gluzsky, Werner Herzog and Christina ...
Bolmer, W B
(1845-1897) US minister and author of The Time Is Coming (1896), a Near Future tale in which a Jewish state is founded in Palestine; Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State (1896) had just been published. The Turkish empire, to which Palestine had belonged, initially resists partition, but is soon brought to order by America with the aid of advanced Weapons, which destroy parts of ...
McEwan, Ian
(1948- ) UK author who began writing material of interest to the fields of the fantastic with "Solid Geometry" in The New Review for July 1974 (also February 1975 Fantastic), in which the protagonist's fascination with the "impossible" geometry (see Dimensions; Mathematics) suggested in the title drags his wife (post-coitally) into an almost literal ...
Sargent, Pamela
(1948- ) US editor and author with an MA in classical philosophy from the State University of New York at Binghamton, where she taught until 1971; she has lived with George Zebrowski for many years. She began to publish work of genre interest with "Landed Minority", in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction as early as September 1970, her early work being assembled in Starshadows: Ten Stories ...
Bolivia
Science fiction in Bolivia is permeated with indigenous Myths of Origin (see Mythology) [see also The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] and references to national culture. The Bolivian sf genre may be divided into two spheres, respectively relating to the Fantasy world and to sf as a genre that seeks to address both the mythical universe and indigenous heritage. / ...
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 ...