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Friday 29 September 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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Hingley, Ronald
(1920-2010) Scottish academic specializing in Russian studies, a translator from the Russian – most notably of the works of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) in nine volumes (1974-1980) – and author. His Near Future sf novel Up Jenkins! (1956) satirically presents a UK split in two after a civil war, the northern half remaining more or less free, the southern half transformed into People's Britain, and ruled in totalitarian ...
Stranger from Venus
Film (1954; vt Immediate Disaster; vt The Venusian US). Princess Pictures/Vitapix Corporation (US)/Rich and Rich Ltd. Produced by Burt Balaban and Gene Martel. Directed by Balaban. Written by Hans Jacoby from a story by Desmond Leslie. Cast includes Helmut Dantine, Cyril Luckham and Patricia Neal. 75 minutes. Black and white. / Driving near a small English village, Susan North (Neal) is distracted by something descending to earth; she ...
Rocketship X-M
Film (1950; vt Expedition Moon). Lippert. Produced, directed and written by Kurt Neumann. Cast includes Lloyd Bridges, John Emery and Osa Massen. 78 minutes. Black and white. / This cheap movie was hastily made to beat the more illustrious Destination Moon (1950) to the theatres. A Rocket on its way to the Moon is diverted by a storm of meteors and lands on ...
Courage the Cowardly Dog
US animated tv series (1999-2002). Stretch Films. Created and directed by John R Dilworth. Written by Irv Bauer, David Steven Cohen, John R Dilworth and William Hohauser. Voice cast includes Arthur Anderson, Marty Grabstein, Thea White and Lionel G Wilson. 52 23-minute episodes (each usually comprising two stories), plus the pilot and a special. Colour. / Courage (Grabstein) is an abandoned dog rescued by an old farming couple, the kindly Muriel Bagge (White) and her unpleasant ...
Bird, Arthur
(? -? ) US author whose Utopia, Looking Forward: A Dream of the United States of the Americas in 1999 (1899), taking off remotely from Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), is a Future History describing an America/UK joint imperium, with America taking the Western Hemisphere (including Canada), and Britain most of the rest. ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...