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Friday 10 May 2024
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 May 2024
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Auster, Paul
(1947-2024) US translator, screenwriter and author, active from around 1970, who came to sudden attention – after years of unrecognized work, culminating in an undemanding Baseball mystery, Squeeze Play (1984) as by Paul Benjamin – with a series of Fabulations playing on detective genres and the French nouveau roman. City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and ...
Gojira 1985
Film (1985; vt Godzilla 1985). Toho/New World. Directed by Kohji Hashimoto, R J Kizer. Written by Shuichi Nagahara, Lisa Tomei, from a story by Tomoyuki Tanaka. Cast includes Raymond Burr (US version), Keiju Kobayashi and Ken Tanaka. 120 minutes, cut to 91 minutes USA and 87 minutes UK. Colour. / The original screenplay from Gojira (1954) is not credited, but this is effectively a remake of the first film; although it purports to be a sequel, ...
Mad Max
Film (1979). Mad Max Pty. Directed by George Miller. Written by James McCausland, Miller, based on a story by Miller. Cast includes Tim Burns, Mel Gibson, Hugh Keays-Byrne and Joanne Samuel. 100 minutes, cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / This low-budget exploitation movie builds up to the vigilante-style revenge of spaced-out policeman Max Rockatansky (Gibson) – who is almost as disturbed as his antagonists – on the motorcycle gang that ...
Ye Yonglie
(1940-2020) Chinese author and occasional film director, sometimes under the pen-names Ye Yang, Ye Ting, Xiao Yong or Jiu Yuan, whose output stretches to fifty volumes of material, of which twenty-four are listed as "works popularizing science". A graduate in chemistry from Beijing University, Ye published his first poem aged eleven, and his first book while still a student. Aged twenty, he became one of the lead authors in the best-selling periodical ...
Parsons, Lucy
(1851-1942) US political agitator, labour organizer, editor and author, born a slave. She was for many years most recognized as the wife of the white anarchist Albert Parsons (1848-1886), who was executed on a trumped-up charge of murder during the 1886 Haymarket bombing in Chicago; but her own considerable stature has gradually gained attention. Most of Parsons's work is nonfiction, but one tale, "Communistic Monopoly" (March 1886 The Alarm), conveys its protagonist into the ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...