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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 ...
Oppegaard, David
(1979- ) US author whose first novel, The Suicide Collectors (2008), radically mutates an old horror trope – the corpse-devouring ghoul – into a Near Future sf tale of considerable force. For five years Earth has suffered under a "disease" or perhaps recognition known as the Despair, which has caused the Suicide of most of the world's population; their bodies are routinely gathered up ...
Kindermann, Eberhard Christian
(1715-? ) German [ie Saxon] translator and astronomer whose speculations about the existence of at least one moon orbiting Mars are presented in his nonfiction Vollständidge Astronomie ["Complete Astronomy"] (1744), the revision of an earlier work [for details including full titles see Checklist below]. Later that year – in ...
Buckner, M M
(? - ) US author and environmental activist (she has done work for the World Wildlife Fund) whose first three sf novels are set on an exceedingly grim but realistic planet Earth, though her excessively intricate plotting tends to divert attention from the harshness of the Near Future/moderately distant future she posits. HyperThought (2001) and War Surf (2005) – the latter won the ...
Stadler, Matthew
(1959- ) US author, most of whose work is nonfiction comprising attempts – some modestly persuasive – to reconcile the postmodern consciousness of enlightened citizens of the world with the planetary spread or sprawl of the city over the past century. In Where We Live Now (coll), where he embraces (to a degree) the concept of the Zwischenstadt ["in-between city"] espoused by Thomas Sieverts (1934- ) in 1997. Something of this ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...