SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 27 November 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.
Site updated on 25 November 2022
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Despicable Me
Animated film (2010). Universal Pictures/Illumination Entertainment. Directed by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin. Written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, based on a story by Sergio Pablos. Cast includes Russell Brand, Steve Carell and Jason Segal. 91 minutes. Colour. / A suburban super-Villain has a simple dream: to steal the Moon. All that stands in his way is a younger, slicker super-villain and three adorable orphans. Will Gru ...
World War III
US tv mini-series (1982). David Greene Productions for NBC-TV. Produced by Bruce Lansbury. Directed by Boris Sagal and David Greene. Written by Robert L Joseph. Cast includes Cathy Lee Crosby, Rock Hudson, Brian Keith and David Soul. 200 minutes. Colour. / In 1987, the Soviet Union invades Alaska in retaliation for the grain embargo imposed by the US in 1980; the plan is to capture the Alaskan oil pipeline as a bargaining point to force the lifting of the embargo. The US President ...
Forward, Robert L
(1932-2002) US physicist and author, senior scientist at Hughes Research Laboratories and one of the most devoted Hard-SF authors of the 1980s; married to Martha Dodson Forward, father of Julie Forward Fuller (with whom he has collaborated on sf) and supernatural fiction author Robert Dodson Forward (1958- ). He began publishing sf with "The Singing Diamond" (February 1979 ...
Leokum, Leonard
(1941-2000) US author of a Near Future sf novel, Weather War (1978) with Paul Posnick, in which the major powers, as World War Three threatens, explore the possibilities of using the technology of Weather Control against one another. [JC]
Holly, Joan Hunter
A late working name of US author Joan Carol Holly (1932-1982), who before 1970 signed herself J Hunter Holly. She had a degree in psychology and conducted creative-writing workshops as well as doing her own work; a benign brain tumour, removed in 1970, interrupted her career 1966-1970, and she later suffered further ill health. She began publishing sf with a novel, Encounter (1959), in which Man and inimical Alien confront one another. Much of her work ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...