SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 17 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 15 May 2024
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Corman, Roger
(1926-2024) US film-maker, a number of whose films are sf. Born in Los Angeles, he graduated in engineering from Stanford University in 1947, and spent a period in the US Navy and a term at Oxford University before going to Hollywood, where he began to write screenplays; his first sale was Highway Dragnet (1954), a picture he coproduced. He soon formed his own company and launched his spectacularly low-budget career. From 1956 he was regularly associated with ...
Total Annihilation
Videogame (1997). Cavedog Entertainment (CE). Designed by Chris Taylor. Platforms: Win (1997); Mac (1999). / Total Annihilation is a Real Time Strategy game, noted for its innovative design. It introduced many new features to the gameplay seen in previous RTS games such as Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn (1995) (see ...
McDonough, Thomas R
(1945- ) US author and lecturer in engineering at Caltech, perhaps best known for his nonfiction and for serving as the coordinator of the SETI programme of the Planetary Society. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Listening for Life in the Cosmos (1987) argues the case for seeking out First Contact with other races in the Galaxy; that there have been no successes to report over the past ...
Esenwein, J Berg
(1867-1946) US author of (chiefly) how-to-write books, and editor of the usually accepted candidate for the first exclusively science-fictional Anthology, which was also sf's first Original Anthology: Adventures to Come (anth 1937). Despite this primacy, its actual impact on the genre was nil. It has been suggested that the eight contributors – none of whom appears to have published anything else ...
Stern, J David
(1886-1971) US newspaper publisher and author. His Eidolon: A Philosophical Phantasy Built on a Syllogism (1952) tells of a virgin birth (see Religion) and an enigmatic Messiah figure. Stern should not be confused with his son, David J Stern (1909-2003), who created Francis the Talking Mule in his novel Francis (1946). [PN/DRL]
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...