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Saturday 23 October 2021
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 22 October 2021
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World of Giants
US tv series (1959). CBS TV. Produced and created by William Alland. One season. Each episode 25 minutes. Black and white. / Marshall Thompson played a man who, on a secret mission, becomes the victim of atomic radiation and suffers Miniaturization to the height of six inches (15cm). The government keeps him on as a secret agent, using him for assignments where his small size will be an advantage. His full-size partner on these missions was played by Arthur Franz. The short-lived series was ...
Myerson, Julie
(1960- ) UK journalist and author whose earlier novels edged at points towards a supernatural ambience, though they remained essentially within the envelope of the mundane; however, hints of message-bearing intrusions from beyond figure conspicuously in The Stopped Heart (2016). Of sf interest is Then (2011), set in a devastated Near Future London, frozen (a likely outcome of Climate Change in the UK), partially abandoned; wandering through this landscape, the protagonist ...
Venus Wars
Japanese animated film (1989). Original title Vinasu Senki. Based on the Manga by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Kugatsusha. Directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Written by Yūichi Sasamoto and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Voice cast includes Eriko Hara, Yuko Sasaki, Kaneto Shiozawa and Katsuhida Uekusa. 103 minutes. Colour. / In 2003 Venus was hit by an ice Comet, losing its atmosphere but gaining moisture, which Earth uses as the basis to first Terraform and then colonize the planet (see Colonization of Other ...
Madsen, Axel
(1930-2007) Danish-born journalist and author, in Canada from 1956 and in US from the 1960s; best-known for his biographies, whose subjects included John Jacob Astor and Simone de Beauvoir. Of sf interest is Unisave (1980), in which the Overpopulation crisis has created a Dystopian world. [JC]
Oboler, Arch
(1909-1987) US scriptwriter, playwright and author, involved in Radio from the early 1930s; he was extremely prolific in that decade, writing and usually producing an estimated 400 radio plays by 1940. His first script, "Futuristics", was broadcast by NBC in celebration of its parent firm's move to the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan; laced with touches of Satire, the script is a paean to the future as seen through the prism of New York. Oboler's best work was heard on two anthology series. For ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began publishing sf reviews in 1964 and sf proper with "A Man Must Die" in New Worlds for November 1966, where much of his earlier criticism also appeared. This criticism, despite some studiously ...