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Friday 14 February 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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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
Speculative Fiction
Item of Terminology used by some writers and critics in place of "science fiction". Its first known use is by the reviewer M F Egan in "Book-Talk" (October 1899 Lippincott's Monthly Magazine), which describes Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888) as "speculative fiction". In the symposium published as Of Worlds Beyond: The Science of Science Fiction Writing (anth 1947) edited by ...
Akira
Animated film (1988). Akira Committee. Directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo, from a screenplay by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on the graphic epic Akira (December 1982-June 1990 Young Magazine) by Otomo. Animation studio: Asahi. Chief animator: Takashi Nakamura. 124 minutes. Colour. / In its day Akira was the most successful attempt yet to transfer sophisticated, state-of-the-art Comic-book graphics to ...
Print Magazines
1. An entry which would have been superfluous in past editions of this encyclopedia because – with the exception of Centauri Express, which was a magazine in audio-cassette form (see Audiozine) – all Magazines, other than personal hand-written ones, were in print form. This may range from beautifully designed and printed SF Magazines such as ...
Kingsajz
Polish film (1988; vt King Size). Zespół Filmowy Kadr. Directed by Juliusz Machulski. Written by Jolanta Hartwig and Juliusz Machulski. Cast includes Jacek Chmielnik, Katarzyna Figura, Grzegorz Heromiński and Jerzy Stuhr. 105 minutes. Colour. / Fairytale motifs [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] are combined with the theft of a ...
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 ...