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Monday 26 September 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 23 September 2022
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Navarro, Yvonne
(1957- ) US author, mostly of fantasy and urban fantasy (in its twenty-first century sense as a term describing supernatural fictions set in cities with romantic plots often involving Vampires, Werewolves and/or Zombies, but normally discounting sf-like rationalizations). She began publishing work of this sort of interest with "Surprise Fall" in the magazine The Horror Show for Spring 1984; her first novel, Afterage (1993; exp as coll 2003) is horror, as is most of her ...
Queen
UK pop/rock band comprising singer Freddie Mercury (1946-1991), guitarist Brian May (1947- ), drummer Roger Taylor (1949- ) and bassist John Deacon (1951- ). After rather floridly pompous beginnings, Queen hit the big time with the single "Bohemian Rhapsody" (on their fourth album, A Night at the Opera, 1975), a splendidly inventive and rousing portmanteau song about the battle between demons and angels for a suicide's soul. ...
McGill, Patrick
(1890-1963) Irish-born poet, journalist and author, in Scotland and England from 1905, in the US from the late 1920s. His World War One reportage was harrowing but insufficiently full of hatred for the Hun to please the authorities; his Irish novels were subsequently spurned by the Irish for reasons of political correctness not now entirely clear. Of sf interest is Sid Puddiefoot (1926), a Lost Race tale set in Africa, where exiles from persecution in Ireland had founded a kingdom in 1785. ...
Burks, Arthur J
(1898-1974) US military man and author whose first career was in the American Marine Corps (1917-1927); he re-enlisted in World War Two, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. In the meantime, he began to publish for the Pulp magazines, his first work of fantastic interest being "Thus Spake the Prophetess" (November 1924 Weird Tales) as Estil Critchie; his first sf was "Monsters of Moyen" for Astounding in April 1930. After two decades of high productivity – in a The New Yorker profile (15 ...
Rollerball
1. Film (1975). United Artists. Directed by Norman Jewison. Written by William Neal Harrison, based on his "Roller Ball Murder" (September 1973 Esquire). Cast includes Maud Adams, John Beck, James Caan and John Houseman. 129 minutes, cut to 125 minutes. Colour. / That one man who stands tall and proud can topple a corrupt system by his example is the moral of this sluggish big-budget movie. In a future run by corporations, ordinary citizens are – implausibly – kept happy by a ...
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. Criticized at first for its failure to annotate its findings – so that, for instance, pseudonyms used for sf could not be ...