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Wednesday 15 January 2025
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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Karinthy, Ferenc
(1921-1992) Hungarian author, the son of Frigyes Karinthy; of his wide output, which is primarily nonfantastic and focuses mostly on Hungarian life in the twentieth century, one novel is of some sf interest (see Fantastika). The linguist protagonist (see Linguistics) of Epepe (1970; trans George Szirtes as Metropole 2008) finds ...
I Married a Monster from Outer Space
Film (1958). Paramount. Directed by Gene Fowler Jr. Written by Louis Vittes, from a story by Fowler and Vittes. Cast includes Ken Lynch, Gloria Talbot and Tom Tryon. 78 minutes. Black and white. / Another manifestation of the rampant Paranoia of the 1950s, I Married a Monster from Outer Space might be called an sf version of I Married a Communist. In this enjoyably tasteless Monster Movie, a young woman's ...
Teenagers from Outer Space
US film (1959; vt Invasion of the Gargon; vt The Gargon Terror; vt The Ray Gun Terror UK). Tom Graeff Productions/Warner Brothers Pictures. Directed and produced by Tom Graeff. Written by Graeff. Cast includes Dawn Bender (credited as Dawn Anderson), Harvey B Dunn (Gramps Morgan), Tom Graeff (credited as Tom Lockyear – Joe Rogers), Bryan Grant, David Love, King Moody (spacecraft captain) and Gene Sterling. 86 minutes cut to 72 minutes for home video release. ...
Decadence
Although the concept of "decadence", meaning the state of decay to which an institution has fallen after a long period of prosperity, can be dated to the early 1500s, the more modern sense, of an entire culture succumbing to an enervating lack of vitality (or an indulgence in sloth or sensual pleasures), began to emerge only in the nineteenth century. The belief that cultures eventually fall into a debilitating (and usually irreversible) sickness owes much to ...
Longyear, Barry B
(1942- ) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977. He soon published his first sf story, "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by ...
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, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...