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Saturday 23 September 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.
Site updated on 18 September 2023
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Sessions, Richard
(? - ) US neuroscientist and author in whose first sf novel, Island Woman (1997), a contemporary woman is in a sense kidnapped via Timeslip into eighteenth century New Spain (see California), where it is intended that she create an Alternate History of America; her immersion in the Native American Chumash civilization is anthropologically sound ...
When Worlds Collide
Film (1951). Paramount. Directed by Rudolph Maté. Written by Sydney Boehm, based on When Worlds Collide (September 1932-February 1933 Blue Book; 1933) and After Worlds Collide (1934) by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer. Cast includes Richard Derr, Peter Hanson, John Hoyt, Larry Keating, Hayden Rorke and Barbara Rush. 83 minutes. Colour. / ...
Wykes, Alan
(1914-1993) Prolific UK author, mainly of nonfiction, whose sf Satire Happyland (1952) depicts an arcadian fantasy-Island in which happiness is literally obtainable. A UK magnate turns the place into a holiday camp; a new kind of bomb finally eliminates it. The nonfiction H G Wells in the Cinema (1977) surveys all the films up to publication date based on H G Wells's fiction. [JC]
Leimbach, Marti
(1963- ) US author, almost entirely of nonfantastic novels, often with a focus on Medicine and the complex traumas of illness, with an emphasis on neurological conditions. The best known of these tales are probably Dying Young (1990) and Daniel Isn't Talking (2006); both were filmed. Leimbach is of sf interest for the Near Future Young Adult ...
Gregory, Owen
Pseudonym of the unidentified UK author (? -? ) of Meccania, the Super State (1918), a Dystopia in the mode of the Scientific Romance which describes a mechanical, rigidly class-ridden society – "Enlightenment" totalitarianism taken to its logical extreme – as recorded by Ming Yuen-hway, a Chinese visitor in 1970, about a century after its founding. Though never so ...
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 ...