SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 26 May 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 23 May 2022
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Morlan, A R
(1958-2016) US author, principally of horror and fantasy, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Four Days Before the Snow" in Night Cry for Summer 1985. The Amulet sequence opening with the short The Cat with the Tulip Face (1991 chap), followed by two novels, is horror. Her many short stories are assembled in a number of collections beginning with Smothered Dolls (coll 2001) [see Checklist below], with that of greatest sf relevance being 'Rillas and Other Science Fiction Stories ...
Role Playing Game
Term used to describe a type of game characterized by Lawrence Schick in Heroic Worlds (1991) as a form of "quantified interactive storytelling". Here "quantified" refers to the fact that numerical rules are employed to simulate the fictional world depicted in the game, "interactive" to the players' use of created personas appropriate to that world to act within it, and "storytelling" to the way in which those players use the game to create a shared narrative. The term itself postdates the ...
Moonraker
Film (1979). Eon/Les Productions Artistes Associés. Directed by Lewis Gilbert. Written by Christopher Wood, very loosely based on Moonraker (1955) by Ian Fleming. Cast includes Lois Chiles, Richard Kiel, Michael Lonsdale and Roger Moore. 126 minutes. Colour. / British agent James Bond (Moore) uncovers a plot by megalomaniac Hugo Drax (Lonsdale) to destroy the present human race using space-launched nerve-gas capsules and replace it by a master race, to be specially bred in a large, ...
Stein, Herbert
(1916-1999) US economist and author, whose conservative-liberal views on markets and governments seem far more centrist than they did in the twentieth century; he is known for an aphorism, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop," which became something of a mantra for those opposed to governmental "interference" with neoliberal aspirations. He wrote one Near Future sf novel, On the Brink (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977) with Benjamin Stein, whom see for details. [JC]
Jeeves, Terry
Working name of UK schoolteacher, long-time Fanzine editor, author and artist Byron Terry Jeeves (1922-2011), whose privately published Bibliographies of Astounding were bylined B T Jeeves and began with A Checklist of Astounding: Part 1 – 1930 to 1939 (1963 chap) [see Checklist below]; these researches were incorporated into The Complete Index to Astounding/Analog (1981) with Mike Ashley. He edited three early issues of Vector (#2-#4, Autumn 1958-Spring 1959) for the British Science ...
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 ...