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Friday 6 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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Tractor Beam
Term coined by E E Smith in Spacehounds of IPC (July-September 1931 Amazing; 1947) for the Force-Field equivalent of a rope and grappling iron, used to seize and immobilize or haul in objects encountered in space – typically, mineral ores and Spaceships which may be hostile, damaged or simply docking. The tractor beam has been widely adopted by sf ...
Herrin von Atlantis, Die
Film (1932; vt L'Atlantide; vt Lost Atlantis; vt The Mistress of Atlantis). Nero Film. Directed by G W Pabst (1885-1967). Written by Ladislaus Vajda, Hermann Oberländer, based on L'Atlantide (1919) by Pierre Benoit. Cast includes Jean Angelo (French version), Gustav Diessl (German version), Brigitte Helm and John Stuart (English version). 87 minutes. Black and white. / This German film is based on Benoit's ...
Korzybski, Alfred
(1879-1950) Polish-born aristocrat (a count) sent after World War One to the USA as an artillery expert. He remained, and wrote a quasi-philosophical text, Science and Sanity (1933), which became the basic handbook of the General Semantics movement, later to prove so influential on the writer A E van Vogt and some others: George Hay was a UK devotee. With the support of a Chicago ...
Dream Dimension Hunter Fandora
Japanese Original Video Animation (1985-1986); original title Mujigen Hunter Fandora. Kaname Production. Created Go Nagai. Directed by Shigenori Kageyama, Kazuyuki Okaseko and Hiroshi Yoshida. Written by Koichi Minade, Ryuji Yamada and Takashi Yamada. Voice cast includes Keiko Han, Mitsuko Horie, Kazuhiko Inoue, Makio Inoue, Akira Kamiya, Yūko Mita and Hirotaka Suzuoki. Three 35-46 minute episodes. Colour. / The ...
Faulks, Sebastian
(1953- ) UK broadcaster, journalist and author, most of whose best-known fiction has been historical novels such as Birdsong (1993) and Charlotte Gray (1999), set respectively in the first and second world wars. He is of initial interest as an author of modestly gonzo Fantastika through the poems and stories assembled as Pistache (coll 2006) and Pistache Returns (coll 2016), each of ...
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 ...