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Monday 15 August 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 15 August 2022
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Kipple
Term originating in Fandom, denoting useless or unwanted household junk and ephemera which seems to reproduce itself at the expense of non-kipple possessions – a low-key, domestic manifestation of Entropy (which see). The word spread from Fan Language into popular culture via the novels of Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) discusses it at some length, and there is a fleeting appearance in A Maze of Death (1970). Ted Pauls (1942-1997) had introduced it as the title ...
Debrandt, Don H
(1963- ) Canadian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Payback Tattoo" for Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine #9, Fall 1990, and whose first novel, The Quicksilver Screen (1992), somewhat clumsily posits twenty-first-century Television as opening genuine portals in Alternate Worlds. The Cyber-myth sequence mixes American Mythology of the Tall Tale variety [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] and Near Future conflicts: in Steeldriver ...
Zotz!
Film (1962). Columbia. Directed by William Castle. Written by Ray Russell, based on Zotz! (1947) by Walter Karig. Cast includes Tom Poston. 87 minutes. Black and white. / A poorly regarded comedy adaptation of Karig's offbeat novel. The original gift of the Psi-Power ability to kill via word and gesture here becomes an external McGuffin, the magic "ZOTZ! coin", whose holder Professor Jonathan Jones (Poston) is additionally able to halt or slow time (see Time Distortion): bullets can be ...
Freeman, Steven F
(? - ) US author who also writes as by Malcolm Pierce; his Blackwell Files sequence beginning with Nefarious (2013) [series not listed in Checklist] edges toward genuine Technothriller territory, but the adventures of the married team of investigators do not ever quite reach the fantastic. Freeman is of sf interest for Supertide (2020), a Disaster tale whose protagonists uncover the imminence of mid-tectonic plate volcanic action on an immense scale; the ...
Peary, Danny
(1949- ) US film scholar and author of many works on sports. He is perhaps best known for his first book, Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird and the Wonderful (coll: 1981), and its two sequels; these include a number of entries on Horror and sf Cinema. Of direct sf interest is Omni's Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies: The Future According to Science Fiction Cinema (anth: 1984; vt Journeys to the Future: Tomorrow's World in Science Fiction Cinema 2005), much ...
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 ...