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Tuesday 14 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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Dobbs, Michael
(1948- ) UK politician who has held various posts in the Conservative Party, and author of House of Cards (1989), a Near Future political thriller set in a UK reeling from the retirement of Margaret Thatcher. The book was filmed by the BBC as House of Cards (1990); it is only in the television version that the book's Machiavellian protagonist, Francis Urquhart (played by Ian Richardson), is given a catchphrase ...
Barrowcliffe, Mark
(1964- ) UK author who also writes as by Mark Alder and as by M D Lachlan. His early novels, beginning with Girlfriend 44 (2000) and all under his own name, are nonfantastic, though The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing up Strange (2007) is an amusing memoir, focusing on his adolescent obsession with the Role Playing Game Dungeons & Dragons. / Most of Barrowcliffe's pseudonymous ...
Schlock
Film (1973). Gazotski Films. Written and directed by John Landis. Cast includes Eliza Garrett, Saul Kahn, Landis and Joseph Piantadosi. 77 minutes. Colour. / This was the feature debut of 22-year-old Landis, who went on to bigger things with The Blues Brothers (1980) and An American Werewolf in London (1981), among others. Low-budget, made in two weeks, it is a genuinely funny and affectionate (though deeply undergraduate) Parody ...
Schumacher, Tony
(circa 1968- ) UK journalist and author whose Hitler Wins sequence, the John Rossett series, comprising The Darkest Hour (2014) and The British Lion (2015), is set in a 1946 London under Nazi occupation; the widowed protagonist, after distinguished service in the defeated forces, is seconded to the Office of Jewish Affairs, under control of the new rulers. His job, which ...
Avoledo, Tullio
(1957- ) Italian author (see Italy) whose first novel, L'elenco telefonico di Atlantide ["The Atlantis Telephone Directory"] (2003), is a Satire of the modern commercial world set partly in a conspiracy-choked Atlantis; the influence of Thomas Pynchon may be detected. La ragazza di Vajont (2008; trans Gillian Ania as ...
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 ...