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Tuesday 9 August 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 8 August 2022
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Orloff, Alvin
(1961- ) US rock lyricist and author of I Married an Earthling (2000), a Satire of Earthly mores, as contrasted with the moderately outrageous Alien culture of the planet Zeeron. The gay subculture of San Francisco is spoofed lovingly. [JC]
Rocketeer, The
Film (1991; vt The Adventures of the Rocketeer). Walt Disney (see The Walt Disney Company). Directed by Joe Johnston. Written by Danny Bilson, Paul DeMeo. Cast includes Alan Arkin, Bill Campbell, Jennifer Connelly, Timothy Dalton and Paul Sorvino. 108 minutes. Colour. Based on The Rocketeer (1982-1995), a Comic created by Dave Stevens (1955-2008). / This enjoyable big-budget re-creation of the thrills of 1930s B-serials – more accurate but less popular than Steven Spielberg's Raiders ...
McMahon, Thomas Patrick
(? - ) US screenwriter and author, mainly of thrillers, in whose The Hubschmann Effect (1973) a new Drug is used in the apparent Genetic Engineering of a group of children, who cause chaos. He contributed at least one story to the Wildsidhe Chronicles Shared World fantasy sequence [not listed]. Thomas Patrick McMahon should not be confused with the scientist and author Thomas McMahon. [JC]
Leyner, Mark
(1956- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "I Was an Infinitely Hot and Dense Dot" in Mississippi Review 1988, and whose spoofish, very mildly Satirical extravaganzas aroused in the 1990s a sense that he had gained some metafictional insight into the raree-show of America (see Absurdist SF; Fabulation), perhaps like Donald Barthelme, though less narratively inclined, or a discombobulated Thomas Pynchon; but there ultimately seemed a lack of ...
Mottley, Peter
(1935-2006) UK author, actor, playwright and advertising worker best known for the Shakespearean dramatic monologue After Agincourt (BBC Radio 3, 1988). His sf novel is The Sex Bar (1972), a farce which derives its comic impetus from the contraceptive/aphrodisiac (see Drugs) confectionery of the title. [DRL]
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 and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...