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Wednesday 11 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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Vess, Charles
(1951- ) American artist. After receiving a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1973, Vess briefly worked in animation before moving to New York City in 1977 to do illustrations for National Lampoon, Heavy Metal, Klutz Press, and other clients. Yet he displayed a natural talent for illustrating works of Fantasy by producing a number of paintings for a 1977 edition of J R R ...
Griffiths, John
(1934- ) UK author in whose sf novel, The Survivors (1965), an assorted group of folk hang on in a Cornish cave after China starts World War Three. A nonfiction (and significantly unliterary) study, Three Tomorrows: American, British and Soviet Science Fiction (1980), treats the genre as a forum, defined – according to the sociological principles of Karl Mannheim (1893-1947), author of ...
Hughes, Zach
Working name for much of his sf of US author Hugh Zachary (1928-2016), who also used various other pseudonyms for sf, including Evan Innes, Peter Kanto, Pablo Kane and Marcus Van Heller; he used his real name for other work from 1961 on, at least 100 titles in all. His novels in the sf field were expertly devised and readable and frequently surprisingly dark in their implications. The Book of Rack the Healer (July/August-September/October 1972 If; 1973) and ...
Handley, Max
(1945-1990) UK scriptwriter and author known in the sf world only for Meanwhile (1977), an intricately comic Fabulation crammed to bursting point with devices from the whole spectrum of sf and fantasy (see Equipoise), from Clones to Mother Goddesses to anthropophagists, all introduced by a sharply knowledgeable hand. [JC]
Flesh Gordon
Film (1974). Mammoth/Graffiti. Directed by Michael Benveniste, Howard Ziehm. Written by Benveniste, William Hunt. Cast includes Suzanne Fields, John Hoyt and Jason Williams. 90 minutes, cut to 84 minutes, cut to 78 minutes. Colour. / This burlesque of Flash Gordon began as a cheap soft-porn film, but became relatively expensive as the special effects became more elaborate. Work on it continued for nearly two years and many special-effects technicians ...
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 ...