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Tuesday 6 June 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 6 June 2023
Sponsor of the day: Joe Haldeman
Trevor, Meriol
(1919-2000) UK author whose Alternate-History tales in the World Dionysius sequence – The Forest and the Kingdom (1949), Hunt the King, Hide the Fox (1950) and The Fires and the Stars (1951) – convey a bright childlike nostalgia for a planet which in some regards resembles Earth but whose history is more satisfactory than ours. This angle of view may be accounted for by the fact that, with ...
Porter, Peter
(1929-2010) Australian editor and poet, in UK from 1951, prolifically active from 1958; two of his 1960s poems appear in Edward Lucie-Smith's early sf Poetry selection Holding Your Eight Hands (anth 1969). He is of further sf interest for one volume, Mars (coll 1988 chap), heavily illustrated by the Australian painter Arthur Boyd (1920-1999), where a sometimes heavily metaphorical ...
Secret Empire, The
US television series (1979). MCA/Universal Pictures/Universal Television. Created by Kenneth Johnson. Produced by Richard Milton. Directors included Joseph Pevney, Nick Havinga, Tony Lo Bianco. Writers included Johnson, Gene R Kearny, Jeri Taylor, Nona Tyson. Cast includes Peter Breck, Pamela Brull, Stefanie Kramer, Mark Lenard, Diane Markoff, David Opatshu, Geoffrey Scott and Charlene Watkins. Twelve 20-minute episodes (only ten released). Black and ...
Poe, Stephen Edward
(1936-2000) US advertising man and author, author of the nonfiction work The Making of Star Trek (1968) as by Stephen E Whitfield (the surname being his stepfather's) and Gene Roddenberry, producer of the original Star Trek series which is the book's subject. The idea for the book was Poe's, as indeed was the actual writing; but Roddenberry gave considerable help and support and is credited along with Whitfield ...
Zinoviev, Alexander
(1922-2006) Russian author whose Ziiaiushchie vysoty (1976 Switzerland; trans Gordon Clough as The Yawning Heights 1979) is a raw Satire of the gerontocracy which dominated the USSR at the time of its writing: in a Dystopia known as Ibansk, every citizen is named Ibanov in order that all distinctions be erased; most citizens commit Suicide, in due course, in a government ...
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 ...