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Saturday 12 October 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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Coover, Robert
(1932-2024) US author who established a considerable reputation with his novels, in which Fabulation and political scatology mix fruitfully. His work could be seen to represent a Postmodernist intensification of the same milieu excoriated by Richard Condon; at times both authors seem to be describing a nightmare dream of orgy-choked life in the Late Roman Empire (see ...
Abyss, The
Film (1989). Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by James Cameron. Produced by Gale Anne Hurd. Written by Cameron. Cast includes Michael Biehn, Todd Graff, Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. 146 minutes. Colour. / Despite the largest budget of the period's fantasies set Under the Sea (see Deepstar Six; Leviathan) at ...
Geigley, Vance A
(1907-1996) US author and businessman involved in mining, building and real estate investment, whose solitary sf novel is Will It End This Way? (1968). [JC/DRL]
Hersey, John
(1914-1993) US author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, born to missionary parents in China where he lived until he was ten; he is perhaps best known for his early book-length essay on the first use of the atomic bomb in warfare, Hiroshima (31 August 1946 The New Yorker; 1946), probably the first text to qualify as a "non-fiction novel", and the most illustrious example of the form. The Child Buyer (1960), a Near-Future ...
Ball, John, Jr
(1911-1988) US commercial pilot and author, much better known for work in other genres – like In the Heat of the Night (1965) – than for his sf novels, the first of which, Operation Springboard (1958; vt Operation Space 1960), is a juvenile about a space race to Venus; The First Team (1971) is a Near Future thriller depicting underground resistance to a Russian takeover of America. [JC]
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...