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Friday 24 March 2023
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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Brown, Eric
(1960-2023) UK author who began publishing sf – after a children's play, Noel's Ark (1982 chap) – with "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation" for Interzone in Autumn 1987; like several further tales assembled in The Time-Lapsed Man and Other Stories (coll 1990), it is set in a future world dominated by the effects of bio-engineering and dense with information. This marriage of Cordwainer ...
Gear, Kathleen O'Neal
(1954- ) US author with extensive training in American prehistory; married to W Michael Gear from 1982. Her first sf, the Powers of Light trilogy – An Abyss of Light (1990), Treasure of Light (1991) and Redemption of Light (1991) – was published as by Kathleen M O'Neal. With an occasionally oppressive relentlessness about the moral and theological issues involved, it presents ...
England, Barry
(1932-2009) UK playwright and author whose first novel, Figures in a Landscape (1968), is a chase thriller set in a surreal unnamed South American country; it was filmed as Figures in a Landscape (1970) directed by Joseph Losey. His second novel, No Man's Land (1997), is a Post-Holocaust military thriller focused on a brigade of soldiers in a burnt-out environment who rescue some innocents and kill many who are not, ...
Sagan, Carl
(1934-1996) US astronomer, planetary scientist and author, professor of astronomy and space sciences and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Sagan played an active role in the Mars experiments carried out by Mariner 9 in 1971, worked also on the Viking and Voyager projects, and was responsible for placing a message to alien life aboard the interstellar spaceship Pioneer 10 (Jupiter flyby 1973). He was ...
Battle Beneath the Earth
Film (1967). Reynolds-Vetter Productions Ltd. Produced by Charles Reynolds and Charles F Vetter. Directed by Montgomery Tully. Written by Vetter. Cast includes Peter Arne, Martin Benson, Kerwin Mathews and Vivienne Ventura (as Viviane Ventura). 91 minutes. Colour. / Dr Arnold Kramer (Arne) is taken into custody and placed in a mental facility because he is convinced that something is tunneling underground beneath the US, like ants. Then a mine collapse in Oregon reveals a tunnel ...
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 ...