SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 27 March 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 25 March 2023
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Brown, Eric
(1960-2023) UK author who began publishing sf – after a children's play, Noel's Ark (1982 chap) – with "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation" for Interzone in Autumn 1987; like several further tales assembled in The Time-Lapsed Man and Other Stories (coll 1990), it is set in a future world dominated by the effects of bio-engineering and dense with information. This marriage of Cordwainer ...
Community
US tv series (2009-2015). Harmonius Claptrap, Krasnoff Foster Productions, Russo Brothers Films, Sony Pictures Television, Universal Media Studios (UMS). Created by Dan Harmon. Directors include Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Rob Schrab and Tristram Shapeero. Writers include Andy Bobrow, Megan Ganz, Andrew Guest, Dan Harmon, Chris McKenna and Hilary Winston. Cast includes Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Chevy Chase, Donald Glover, Gillian Jacobs, Ken Jeong, Joel McHale, Danny Pudi and Jim ...
Fire Next Time, The
Made-for-tv mini-series (1993; vt American Inferno). RIH Entertainment for CBS-TV. Produced by Edwin Self. Directed by Tom McLoughlin. Screenplay by James Henerson. Cast includes Bonnie Bedelia, Richard Farnsworth, Ashley Jones, Craig T Nelson and Justin Whalin. 195 minutes. Colour. / The Fire Next Time begins in 2005, moving to 2017 after a series of natural Disasters has broken out around the world due to ...
Modesitt, L E, Jr
(1943- ) US industrial economist and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Great American Economy" in Analog for May 1973, the first of two Council of Economic Advisors tales. Most of his work, both fantasy and sf, has been in the form of series, such as the Timedivers sequence – beginning with his first novel, The Fires of Paratime (1982; vt The Timegod 1992), plus ...
Advertising
There is a long sf tradition, often tinged with Satire, of speculation about future advertising. Rudyard Kipling's With the Night Mail (November 1905 McClure's; rev 1909 chap) includes sedately conventional ads for Airships and their trappings, supposedly from a magazine of the story's year 2000. More often, the latest ...
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 ...