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Thursday 5 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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Chayefsky, Paddy
Working name of US playwright and author Sidney Aaron Chayefsky (1923-1981), most famous for his work as a Television dramatist; Marty (produced 1953) marks for many a culmination (and a sign of the passing) of the Golden Age of US television drama. The Tenth Man (first performed 1959; 1960) is a Dybbuk fantasy based on The Dybbuk (1920) by S Ansky (1863-1920), which revolves around an exorcism that serves as a revealing mirror ...
Creature from the Black Lagoon, The
Film (1954). Universal. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Harry Essex, Arthur Ross, from a story by Maurice Zimm. Cast includes Julia Adams, Ricou Browning (uncredited), Richard Carlson and Richard Denning. 79 minutes. Black and white. 3-D. / A humanoid creature with gills successfully resists attempts by three scientists – attracted to the area by the discovery of a fossilized hand with fins – to take him from his native lagoon in the ...
Poole, W Scott
(1971- ) US academic and author whose studies in horror (see Horror in SF) include Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror (2014), a study of the actor Vampira (real name Maila Nurmi), most famous in an sf context for her appearance in Edward D Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959); ...
Alban, Antony
Pseudonym of UK agricultural consultant and author Anthony Allert Thompson (1939- ) in whose first novel, Catharsis Central (1968), the population of Earth, after a devastating Disaster, is kept under sedation by a giant Computer ostensibly programmed by a woman (though her male "assistant" does the serious creative work women are incapable of), until it is destroyed by a resurgent humanity, an ...
Pern [series]
Very popular series of Planetary Romance/Science Fantasy tales by Anne McCaffrey (whom see for fuller discussion). The initial Pern stories are the Hugo-winning "Weyr Search" (October 1967 Analog) and the Nebula-winning "Dragonrider" (December 1967-January 1968 Analog), ...
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 ...