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Friday 20 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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Palmer, Raymond A
(1910-1977) US author and editor. His childhood was plagued by serious accidents including one that crushed his spine: in adulthood, as a consequence, he stood less than five feet tall and was hunchbacked, though he never allowed physical stress to affect his career. He was an active sf fan from the late 1920s, together with Walter Dennis creating the Science Correspondence Club (or SCC) in early 1929 with the express purpose of uniting the growing number of small local science/sf fan clubs ...
Moorcock, Michael
(1939- ) UK author and editor, married to Hilary Bailey 1962-1978; London-based until around 1980, and London-obsessed from his first vivid memories of the bombing in World War Two of its southern suburbs, an experience constantly reflected in his fiction – wartime London underlies many of its characteristic landscapes and Icons and its images ...
Utley, Steve
(1948-2013) US poet (see Poetry) and short-story author whose black verve and acidulous knowingness about the absurdities of the genre made him, for a while, a figure of edgy salience in the field. He began publishing with "The Unkindest Cut of All" for Perry Rhodan #20 in December 1972, but stopped by the end of the decade; stories of interest include "Deviation from a Theme" (May 1976 Galaxy), an ...
Waldrop, Howard
(1946-2024) US author, an important member of the Texas-based school of sf writers, much of whose early work was set in the American South. He began to publish work of genre interest with "Lunchbox" in Analog for May 1972, reportedly John W Campbell Jr's last (and perhaps least typical) discovery before he died with the tale still in manuscript. This was assembled with other early stories, some previously unpublished, as ...
Journey to the Beginning of Time, A
Czechoslovakian film (1955; original title Cesta do pravěku; vt Journey to Prehistory). Filmové Studio Gottwaldov. Directed by Karel Zeman. Written by J A Novotný and Karel Zeman. Cast comprises Vladimír Bejval, Petr Herrmann, Zdeněk Husták and Josef Lukáš. 93 minutes. Colour. / After a boy finds a fossil trilobite near a cave, his three teenaged friends take him to Prague's natural history museum to see the exhibits, ...
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 ...