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Friday 30 September 2022
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 26 September 2022
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Swerling, Anthony
(1944-2004) UK author of The Cambridge Plague: An Illustrated Fantasia on the Social and Sexual Climate Generated by the Descent of the Plague on a Cambridge of the Future (1971), a Near Future Satire, heavily illustrated by the author, whose premise is amply expounded in its subtitle. [JC]
Happening, The
Film (2008). Twentieth Century Fox in association with UTV Motion Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment presents a Blinding Edge Pictures production in association with Dune Entertainment. Written and directed by M Night Shyamalan. Cast includes Betty Buckley, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo, Ashlyn Sanchez and Mark Wahlberg. 91 minutes. Colour. / As an epidemic of mass suicides is traced to the release by the plant biosphere of an inhalable neurotoxin which switches off the human brain's ...
Appleby, Ken
Working name of UK author Kenneth Philip Appleby (1953- ), whose first sf novel, The Voice of Cepheus (1989), presents a clear-voiced, optimistic vision of the consequences of First Contact with an Alien species whose signals have been detected by the young female protagonist and her astronomer boss. [JC]
Friedberg, Gertrude
(1908-1989) US author who also taught. Her career as a playwright began early, with Three Cornered Moon (1933), which was later filmed, but she began publishing sf only in April 1963, with "The Short and Happy Death of George Frumkin" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her fine sf novel The Revolving Boy (1966) strikingly tells the story of a child sensitive from his unique birth in free fall to signals, possibly intelligent in origin, from beyond the solar system. He reveals his ...
Acolyte, The
US Fanzine or Amateur Magazine published by Francis T Laney both solo and with coeditors, initially from Clarkston, Washington, District of Columbia, and later from Los Angeles, California. Fourteen issues from Fall 1942 to Spring 1946; US quarto paper; first produced by ditto (spirit duplicator) and from #2 or #3 by mimeograph (stencil duplicator). Schedule: quarterly. / The Acolyte published fiction, Poetry and critical articles; it became one of the most highly regarded "serious and ...
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, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. Criticized at first for its failure to annotate its findings – so that, for instance, pseudonyms used for sf could not be ...