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Saturday 12 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 ...
Liss, David
(1966- ) US comics writer and author, most of whose novels have been historical thrillers, beginning with A Conspiracy of Paper (2000), most featuring Benjamin Weaver [not listed below]. A Young Adult series, the Randoms sequence beginning with Randoms (2015), a slightly helter-skelter though deliberately comic narrative whose young protagonist Zeke discovers that the sf he had devoured when even ...
Bierce, Ambrose
(1842-circa 1914) US journalist, poet and author of short stories and Satires, deeply affected by his four years in the American Civil War (he enlisted as a private in 1861, was breveted major for bravery, and was wounded twice). Like Bret Harte and Mark Twain, (who settled in London, as for shorter periods did Joaquin Miller and Twain), he soon went abroad, ...
Primal Scream
Film (1988; vt Hellfire UK). Manley. Directed by William J Murray. Written by Murray and David di Pietro (uncredited). Cast includes Stephen Caldwell, Sharon Mason, Jon Maurice, Kenneth McGregor, Julie Miller and Joseph White. 89 minutes. Colour. / In 1997 a revolutionary Power Source, the catalytic Element Hellfire, is a controversial issue. Terrorists destroy a Space Station ...
Koontz, Dean R
(1945- ) US author of much fiction under various names. He began his career with a number of sf novels; but since 1975 he has concentrated on horror. Little of his later output attempts to accomplish the interweaving sf and horror tropes (see Equipoise; Horror in SF) in the manner evolved by either Stephen King, whose compelling sense of locality also stands out, or Peter ...
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 ...