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Friday 22 September 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.
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Johnston, Bryan
(? - ) US screenwriter, producer and author; his sf novel Death Warrant (2022) unveils an homage to Robert Sheckley's The Tenth Victim (full version 1966) through its depiction of a young woman who agrees to be killed on a reality show (see Media Landscape; Television), but without knowing that a ...
Carter, Paul A
(1926-2016) US social historian and author who began publishing sf with "The Last Objective" for Astounding in August 1946. His occasional stories over the next decades showed that, had he wished, he could have made writing his primary career. In his critical study The Creation of Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Magazine Science Fiction (coll 1977) he demonstrated an intimate and sophisticated knowledge of the field. With Gregory ...
Metropolis
Film (1927). UFA. Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Cast includes Alfred Abel, Erwin Biswanger, Gustav Fröhlich, Heinrich George, Brigitte Helm, Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Theodor Loos and Fritz Rasp. Versions (selected) include original version 153 minutes; 1927 US Paramount version print 114 minutes; 1984 US reconstruction and adaptation by Giorgio Moroder 80 minutes; 2002 F W Murnau Stiftung ...
Change of Mind
Film (1969). Directed by Robert Stevens. Produced by Seeleg Lester, Dick Wesson and Henry S White. Written by Lester and Wesson. Cast includes Janet MacLachlan, Leslie Nielsen, Susan Oliver and Raymond St Jacques. 98 minutes. Colour. / A rare movie treatment of Race in SF in a contemporary setting, in which white US district attorney David Rowe undergoes a brain transplant (see Identity Transfer) into the body of a ...
Scott, Sarah
(1720-1795) UK historian and author, younger sister of the author Elizabeth Montagu (1718-1800) who until recent years was very much the better known, being noted for works in her own right and for the salon she dominated. Scott's literary career began with a novel, The History of Cornelia (1750), which has no fantastic element. She is of sf interest primarily for her Utopia, A Description of Millenium Hall [sic; for full title see ...
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 ...