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Thursday 7 July 2022
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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Atkins, Juan
(1962- ) US electronic musician and composer. Inspired by Kraftwerk, Afrika Bambaataa, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Parliament, Atkins began experimenting with synthesizers and tape-decks in the early 1980s, making a name for himself as a pioneer of techno and hip-hop. He has recorded under a variety of names. As "Cybotron" he had hits with "Cosmic Cars" (1981) and the robotic "Clear" (1983), both of which have been widely sampled by other artists. As "Model 500" he has ...
Twohy, David
(1955- ) US filmmaker, sometimes credited as David N Twohy or D T [sic] Twohy, best known for the Riddick series Pitch Black (2000), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), and The Chronicles of Riddick: Dead Man Stalking (2013), and as one of the two writers actually credited on Waterworld (1995). He also wrote drafts of Alien³ (1992) – where his major contribution was the Prison-planet setting – worked on the screenplay of Impostor (2001) during its expansion ...
Dooner, Pierton W
(1844-1907) Canadian-born editor and author who immigrated to the USA in 1861. His Near Future tale, Last Days of the Republic (1880), was the first US Yellow Peril novel that could be described in sf terms, and demonstrates the terribly common dynamic by which a guilty party, or nation, feels compelled to transfer its guilt to the victim or victim-nation: in 1880, the year of the book's publication, Chinese coolies had been used for some time as forced labour in California, and in terms of ...
Knox, Hugh
(1942-2011) US author of erotic novels, some of them sf (see Sex), including Eros 2000 AD (1970) as by H R Kaye, which suggests that the Near Future will be engaging; and The Satyr (1970), which hints at Superman tropes. [JC]
Stroyar, J N
(? - ) US physicist and author, resident in Germany; her Children's War sequence – comprising The Children's War (2001), which won the Sidewise Award for 2001, A Change of Regime (2004) and Becoming Them: As Once in a Dream (2017) – is set in a Hitler Wins Alternate History version of America and Britain in 2090, the Jonbar Point being Hitler's decision, under the influence of an astrologer, not to invade Russia; he soon comes to a tyrannical ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its listing of Pseudonyms. Criticized at first for its failure to annotate its findings – so that, for instance, pseudonyms used for sf could not be ...