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Saturday 1 April 2023
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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Thomas, D M
(1935-2023) UK poet and author who made use of sf themes most explicitly in such early Poetry as "The Head-Rape" in New Worlds for March 1968 and the two-part "Computer 70: Dreams & Lovepoems" (March-April 1970 New Worlds), a sequence assembled with other poetry of interest in Logan Stone (coll 1970); or the later "S. F." (in The Umbral Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry, anth ...
Wul, Stefan
Pseudonym of French dental surgeon and author Pierre Pairault (1922-2003), who swept onto the sf scene with several consistent and imaginative novels, all published 1956-1959. In his first, Retour à "O" ["Return to Zero"] (1956), a desperate attempt by Earth – to control criminals imprisoned on the Moon (see Crime and Punishment) by shrinking them (see ...
Big Dumb Objects
A jocular though affectionate piece of sf Terminology which seems to have been coined by Roz Kaveney in her retrospective essay "Science Fiction in the 1970s" (June 1981 Foundation), with specific reference to the titular Macrostructure of Larry Niven's Ringworld (1970). The term became ...
Book of the New Sun, The
Major sf work with a Far-Future, Dying Earth setting by Gene Wolfe (whom see for fuller discussion). The Book of the New Sun (1980-1983 4vols) was followed by the nonfiction commentary The Castle of the Otter: A Book About The Book of the New Sun (coll 1983), the direct sequel The Urth of the New Sun (1987), several shorter tales and two further series: the ...
RoboCop 2
Film (1990). Orion. Directed by Irvin Kershner. Written by Frank Miller, Walon Green from a story by Miller. Cast includes Nancy Allen, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan, Daniel O'Herlihy and Peter Weller. 116 minutes. Colour. / Dismissed by most critics as an unimaginative retread of RoboCop, RoboCop 2 nevertheless has merits. Its narrative clarity and dash, which deliver a vision of future Detroit as one of the deeper ...
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 ...