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Monday 16 September 2024
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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Adam, Ruth
(1907-1977) UK author and broadcaster, in whose pacifist War on Saturday Week (1937) totalitarian "emergency" measures are imposed upon a Near Future Great Britain as war looms. [JC]
Jenks, William
(1778-1866) US clergyman and author whose Future History, Memoir of the Northern Kingdom, Written, A D 1872 [for full title see Checklist below] (dated 1901 but 1808), describes the world as of the date of its claimed composition. Politics dominates the account. America has been split into three parts: the Southern States, now a monarchy under the influence of France; the Northern States, at peace with Canada due ...
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Film (1959). Reynolds Pictures. Written and directed by Edward D Wood Jr. Cast includes Criswell, Tor Johnson, Bela Lugosi, Vampira (Maila Nurmi) and Gregory Walcott. 79 minutes. Black and white. / Enduringly strange B-picture mixing UFOs and Zombies in a free-associating quasi-plot about Alien visitants reanimating the dead in an attempt to warn humanity about the ...
Numan, Gary
(1958- ) UK pop composer and performer. Numan achieved a shortlived but notable commercial success with a series of futuristic songs performed to the accompaniment of electronic synthesizers, very much under the influence of Kraftwerk. Although the youthful angst of this music does sometimes veer into self-melodramatic nonsense, at its best these plangent soaring synth-melodies their pulsing, mechanic beats, and the mournful, slightly nasal ...
Ward, Henry
(1921-1989) Pseudonym of French author Henri-Louis-Luc Viard (1921-1989), who also wrote as by Louis-François Beaumetz and Louis-François Carlemont. His sf novels, as by Ward, are Les soleils verts (1956; trans Neame as The Green Suns 1961) and L'enfer est dans le ciel (1958; trans Alan Neame as Hell's Above Us 1960). The first book contains a detailed biography of Henry Ward in the introduction, claiming that he was a ...
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 ...