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Saturday 18 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 ...
Johnston, E K
(? - ) Canadian archaeologist and author, active in fan fiction (see Fandom) from 2002; she has specialized in Young Adult fantasy from her first series, the Dragon Slayer of Trondheim sequence beginning with The Story of Owen (2014) and the Thousand Nights sequence beginning with A Thousand Nights (2015), which retells material from the Nights [for ...
Payn, James
(1830-1898) UK author and editor whose 100+ books cover a wide variety of genres, his sf being comparatively inconspicuous. The Cruise of the Anti-Torpedo (1871 chap) anonymous is a typical Future-War tale, one of many written in direct response to George T Chesney's The Battle of Dorking (May 1871 Blackwood's Magazine; 1871 chap) (see ...
Bilderdijk, Willem
(1756-1831) Dutch poet, dramatist, and author of nonfiction on many subjects. His one work of fiction was the novella Kort verhaal van eene aanmerklijke luchtreis, en nieuwe planeetontdekking (1813 chap anon; trans Paul Vincent as A Short Account of a Remarkable Aerial Voyage and Discovery of a New Planet 1987 chap), in which a Balloonist is cast away on a small satellite orbiting within the Earth's atmosphere. Its flora and fauna are ...
Dietrich, Bryan D
(1965- ) US academic associated with Newman University, Wichita, Kansas, and poet (see Poetry) whose first collection, Krypton Nights: Poems (coll 2002 chap; exp vt Single Bound: Krypton Nights / Amazon Days 2018), established a continuing pattern in which sets of poems are grouped around particular figures or themes, in this case the Superhero Superman ...
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 ...