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Tuesday 15 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 ...
Hazel, Paul
(1944- ) US author whose Finnbranch Trilogy makes use of some sf devices, though it is primarily a Celtic fantasy about a hero – and underworld god – named Finn, told in a dense, difficult style which nevertheless has very considerable power. The first two volumes, Yearwood (1980) and Undersea (1982), are moderately orthodox, though recounted with unconventional intensity, but the third, Winterking (1985), is ...
Incident at Raven's Gate
Film (1988; vt Encounter at Raven's Gate). Hemdale. Directed by Rolf de Heer. Written by Marc Rosenberg, de Heer. Cast includes Vince Gil, Celin Griffen, Saturday Rosenberg, Ritchie Singer and Steven Vidler. 89 minutes. Colour. / Australian cinema has produced a number of under-appreciated genre items, such as The Last Wave (1977) and Razorback (1984). This is another, a conspiracy-cum-UFO ...
Big Little Books
Compact children's book format inaugurated in late 1932 by the Whitman Publishing Company (Racine, Wisconsin) with The Adventures of Dick Tracy (graph 1932) and widely imitated by other publishers. A typical Big Little Book had a width of 3 5/8 inches and a height of 4½ inches, with 432 pages making a fat little volume 1½ inches thick (roughly 9.2 cm x 11.4 cm x 3.8cm). Every page of text was faced by a full-page captioned picture. Many ...
Smith, George O
(1911-1981) US electronics engineer and author, most active and prominent in the 1940s in Astounding Science-Fiction, in which his first story, "QRM – Interplanetary", appeared in October 1942: the tale both began his sf career and initiated his most famous endeavour, the Venus Equilateral Series of stories (all in Astounding except for one late addition) about a ...
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 ...