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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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Moonraker
Film (1979). Eon/Les Productions Artistes Associés. Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Written by Christopher Wood, very loosely based on Moonraker (1955) by Ian Fleming. Cast includes Lois Chiles, Richard Kiel, Michael Lonsdale and Roger Moore. 126 minutes. Colour. / British agent James Bond (Moore) uncovers a plot by megalomaniac Hugo Drax (Lonsdale) to destroy the present human race using space-launched nerve-gas capsules and replace it ...
MacDonald, Alexander
(1878-1939) UK author, latterly resident in Australia, whose The Lost Explorers: A Story of the Trackless Desert (1907) is a Lost Race set in the mountainous Australian outback, where traces of the ancient civilization of Lemuria are found lingering in decadent aborigines. Through the Heart of Tibet (1910) has also been incorrectly cited as a Lost Race novel. [JC]
Sykes, Arthur A
(1861-1939) UK teacher, journalist and author who sometimes wrote as by A A S and who sometimes spelled his surname Sikes; mostly in the second of his collections, Without Permission: A Book of Dedications (coll 1896), are assembled some stories of sf interest, usually Satirical, including "The New Bacillus", which seems to echo H G Wells's "The Stolen Bacillus" (21 June 1894 The ...
White, Alex
(1981- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Boy, the Bomb, and the Witch Who Returned" in Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences (anth 2013) edited by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris. Their first novel, Every Mountain Made Low (2016) – though its narrative focuses on a protagonist able to see the dead, who in turn see her and harm her – employs a perhaps more fruitful ...
Obukhova, Lydia
(1924-1991) Russian author who began publishing work of interest as early as 1945, and whose books gained some popularity in her native land. Lilit (1966; trans Mirra Ginsburg as Daughter of Night: A Tale of Three Worlds 1974) tells the story of Adam's first wife, Lilith (see Adam and Eve), who meets an Alien assessing Earth for colonization. He falls in love with her, ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...