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Saturday 14 December 2024
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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Schoeman, Karel
(1939-2017) South African author who wrote primarily in Afrikaans. Of his many novels, Na die Geliefde Land (1972; trans Marion V Friedman as Promised Land 1978), which was filmed as Promised Land (2003), is of sf interest for its portrait of a Near Future South Africa stultified by the consequences of apartheid, and in which, after they have lost power, whites live marginalized existences. [JC]
Quality Comics
The name most often used by US Comics publisher Comic Magazines Inc, founded in 1937 and active for some years. The logo Quality Comics appeared on all its titles from 1940 to the end of its existence. Established by Everett "Busy" Arnold (1899-1974), Quality published in various genres; Superheroes made up the bulk of its titles in the early to late 1940s, with such characters as Plastic Man and Kid Eternity along with ...
Serial Films
In the early days of Cinema there was a considerable vogue for serial films divided into chapters or episodes intended for separate screening in weekly instalments, a famous nonfantastic example being the 20-part General Film Company/Eclectic Film Company melodrama The Perils of Pauline (1914), directed by Louis J Gasnier and Donald MacKenzie with the much-menaced Pearl White in the title role. Later serials introduced the tradition of breaking off at ...
Blumberg, Rhoda
(1917-2016) US author of some 25 books of historical nonfiction written for children [not listed below]. Her most notable venture into "non-fact" speculation is the lighthearted The First Travel Guide to the Moon: What to Pack, How to Go, and What to See When You Get There (1980 chap), which assumes commercial Space Flight and space tourism from 1995 onward and is written as though for early twenty-first-century readers planning a vacation on the ...
Wentworth-James, Gertie de S
Working name of UK author Gertrude Wentworth-James (1874-1933), born Gertrude Soilleux Webster, who sometimes wrote as Gertie S Wentworth-James. Some of her fifty or more flirtatious but ultimately decorous romances contain elements of sf interest, beginning with The Soul That Came Back (1922), a tale of Reincarnation. In the Near Future The Television Girl (1928), an osteopath falls in love with a ...
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 ...