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Sunday 8 December 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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Kizu Tora
Pen-name of Mitsuyoshi Okazawa (1900-1950), also known as Ryōji Naka, Torao Kimura and several other pseudonyms, an early twentieth century Japanese author of Pulp fiction. Kizu appears to have been one of the Japanese intellectuals who embraced left-wing ideologies in the 1920s, leading to several of his stories to be informed by the anti-war concerns of Japan's "proletarian" movements. Paramount among his works in this mode is "Hai-iro ...
Freejack
Film (1992). Morgan Creek/Ronald Shusett/Warner Bros. Directed by Geoff Murphy. Written by Steven Pressfield, Ronald Shusett, Dan Gilroy, based on Immortality Delivered (October 1958-February 1959 Galaxy as "Time Killer"; 1958; exp vt Immortality, Inc. 1959) by Robert Sheckley. Cast includes Jonathan Banks, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Hopkins, Mick Jagger and Rene Russo. 108 minutes. Colour. / ...
Zotz!
Film (1962). Columbia. Directed by William Castle. Written by Ray Russell, based on Zotz! (1947) by Walter Karig. Cast includes Tom Poston. 87 minutes. Black and white. / A poorly regarded comedy adaptation of Karig's offbeat novel. The original gift of the Psi-Power ability to kill via word and gesture here becomes an external McGuffin, the ...
Queen of Blood
Film (1966; vt Planet of Blood). Cinema West Productions. American version of Mechte Navstrechu (1963; vt A Dream Come True; vt Encounter in Space), directed by Curtis Harrington. Written by Curtis Harrington. Cast includes Robert Boon, Don Eitner, Dennis Hopper, Florence Marly, Judi Meredith, Basil Rathbone and John Saxon. 81 minutes. Colour. / While this film is based on, and incorporates a great deal of footage ...
Clark, Jan
(? - ) US author, mainly known for the two volumes of her Prodigy sequences of Space Operas comprising Prodigy (1997) and Earth Herald (1998), featuring Rieka Degahv, female captain of a military spaceship who becomes embroiled in an interstellar intrigue designed to topple a commonwealth of species, in which humans are present but do not dominate. The fast pace and claustrophobic ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...