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Thursday 8 June 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.
Site updated on 8 June 2023
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Montague, Charles Howard
(1858-1889) US editor, journalist and author whose Two Strokes of the Bell: A Strange Story (1886) deals melodramatically with Amnesia in a supernatural frame. Of more sf interest is The Doctor's Mistake: Or What Myrta Saw: An Experiment with a Life (1888) with Clement Milton Hammond, where a complexly melodramatic plot – at least one Reincarnation seems to ...
Coneheads
Film (1993). Paramount. Directed by Steve Barron, produced Lorne Michaels. Written by Tom Davis & Aykroyd and Bonnie Turner & Terry Turner. Cast includes Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Michael McKean and Laraine Newman. 82 minutes. Colour. / This gentle and very lightweight Satire, an intermittently amusing comedy, is based on sketches first performed on the US television show Saturday Night Live. Two Aliens (Aykroyd and ...
Triple A
Item of Terminology relating to Videogames. Triple A or AAA titles are games released by mainstream developers at the top end of the gaming market. They are highly developed in terms of graphical capability, gameplay and design, and are expected to sell well. Game development companies spend large amounts of time, resources and marketing on these titles, which are often used as flagship titles for their companies and teams. AAA ...
Burroughs, Edgar Rice
(1875-1950) US author whose early life was marked by numerous false starts and failures – at the time he started writing, aged 36, he was a pencil-sharpener salesman – but it would seem that the impulse to create psychically charged Science-Fantasy environments was deep-set and powerful, for he began with a great rush of energy, and within two years had initiated three of his four most important series. / Certainly the first of his published ...
Imaginary Science
Imaginary science is extremely common in sf; it is not at all the same thing as Pseudoscience. The difference is that the adherents of the pseudosciences believe them to be true, whereas the sf writer who uses imaginary science knows perfectly well that it is untrue. / Sf has often been criticized for scientific illiteracy, sometimes unfairly, for, while it does produce many simple Scientific Errors, it commonly uses ...
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. ...