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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.
Site updated on 25 September 2023
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Woodley, Sherrida
(1950- ) US author in whose Near Future sf tale Quick Fall of Light (2010) the survival of a passenger pigeon offers a chance that Homo sapiens will not succumb to a new Pandemic as devastating as the 1918 Spanish flu. [JC]
Cahill, Matt
(1970- ) Canadian film production manager, psychotherapist and author, active in film work from around 2000. He is of sf interest for his first novel, The Society of Experience (2015), whose bereaved protagonist is recruited by the eponymous organization, members of which may claim to be Secret Masters, to undergo an experiment in Time Travel. Interpenetrations of ...
Boston, Bruce
(1943- ) US poet (see Poetry) and prose author whose early work tended to the surreal, but who began – with stories like "Break" for New Worlds 7 (anth 1974) edited by Hilary Bailey and Charles Platt – to invoke fantasy and sf themes. His early poetry – much of it not genre at all, and almost all of it couched in a classically lucid voice ...
Grey Goo
Popular term (also spelt "gray goo" in the USA) for the nightmare scenario of uncontrolled Nanotechnology in which the hypothetical tiny self-replicators reproduce without limit, converting all available organic matter – or in some cases inorganic matter, or both – into more and yet more devouring grey goo. Such a Disaster is threatened but averted in Assemblers of Infinity (September-December 1992 ...
Homunculus
Serial film (1916; vt Homunculus der Führer). Deutsche Bioscop. Directed by Otto Rippert. Script by Otto and Robert Neuss, based on a story by Robert Reinert. Cast includes Olaf Fønss and Friedrich Kühne. Six episodes; total length 401 minutes. Black and white. / This six-part silent German serial, the most popular of the World War One period, tells of an artificial man created by a scientist (Kühne) who wants to make a perfect creature of pure reason. ...
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 ...