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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.
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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 ...
Davis, Chandler
(1926-2022) US mathematician, academic and author, in Canada from 1960, after serving a short prison term for refusing to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee and subsequently losing his position as professor at the University of Michigan; in 1991, the university initiated the annual "Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic Freedom" (Mark Nickerson and Clement Markert had also been dismissed after refusing to testify). As a mathematician, he published many influential ...
Peel, Colin D
(1936-2013) UK author of two undemanding Space Operas for Robert Hale Limited, Hell Seed (1979) and Glimpse of Forever (1980). [JC]
Cayea, John
(? - ) US illustrator, seemingly active only from around 1970 to around 1981, his first cover being for Eando Binder's The Night of the Saucers (1971) from Belmont Books. Almost all of his following work was for Doubleday and Company, beginning with Jacqueline Lichtenberg's House of Zeor (1974). A Cayea cover soon became easy to recognize, often ...
Captain Midnight
1. Serial Film (1942). Columbia Pictures. Directed by James W Horne. Written by Basil Dickey, Wyndham Gittens, George Plympton and Jack Stanley, based on the radio serial Captain Midnight (1938-1949) created and written by Wilfred G Moore and Robert M Burtt. 15 episodes; total running time 270 minutes. Cast includes James Craven, Sam Edwards, Knox Manning (narrator), Dave O'Brien and Luana Walters. Black and white. / Highly ...
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 ...