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Tuesday 14 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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Ka-Zar
US Pulp Magazine. Three issues, October 1936, January 1937 and June 1937, published by Manvis Publications; edited anonymously by Charles Goodman. Each issue featured a "complete novel" about the title character plus non-genre short adventure fiction; the last issue was titled Ka-Zar the Great. / Ka-Zar begins as a small boy, the sole survivor of a plane crash in Africa that kills his parents. He is raised by lions and becomes a ...
Kacvinsky, Katie
(? - ) US author whose work has been restricted to the Young Adult market, with an emphasis on teenage romances; in the Maddie sequence beginning with Awaken (2011), this pattern is integrated with some smoothness into an sf world: a Near Future California whose Dystopian nature is sensed by the young ...
Wood, Edward D, Jr
(1924-1978) US filmmaker and pulp author monumentalized posthumously for his eccentric lifestyle and surreally inept attempts at genre B-movies, of which especially Glen or Glenda? (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) have attained belated but unassailable cult status. His films are characterized by dreamlike narrative logic, bombastic dialogue, a repertory cast of vivid oddballs (including the elderly Bela ...
Hunter, Mel
Working name of American artist Milford Joseph Hunter III (1927-2004). After growing up with an abusive father, Hunter attended Northwestern University in Illinois before moving to California, where he worked as an artist for Northrop Aircraft Corporation. But he began seeking employment as a freelance artist, and in early 1953 he sold his first cover to Galaxy magazine, depicting some men preparing a spaceship for flight, unusually observed from above. As early ...
Wrightson, Patricia
(1921-2010) Australian author, whose significant oeuvre of Young Adult fiction is mostly definable as fantasy [for extended entry on Patricia Wrightson see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], with tales like The Nargun and the Stars (1973) markedly innovative (from a perspective half a century on). They are particularly notable for their attempts unencroachingly to represent ...
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 ...