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Friday 29 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.
Site updated on 25 September 2023
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Hesky, Olga
(1912-1974) UK editor and author in whose wry and somewhat Surrealist sf novel, The Purple Armchair (1961), the Alien who resembles an armchair and is purple must decide whether or not the human race – caught in a near-future Dystopia dominated by Computers – should survive. Eventually the "chair" says no. [JC]
Sex
This entry is primarily about human sexual relationships and sexual stereotypes as themes in sf; i.e., it is primarily about Psychology and Sociology. It discusses neither procreation nor the various inventive methods of Alien sexual reproduction devised by sf writers. / Traditionally sf has been a puritanical and male-oriented literature. Before the 1960s there was little sf that consciously ...
Barb Wire
Film (1996). Polygram Film Entertainment. Directed by David Hogan. Written by Chuck Pfarrer and Ilene Chaiken, from a story by Chaiken; based on the Comics character created by Chris Warren for Dark Horse Comics. Cast includes Amir Aboulela, Pamela Anderson, Xander Berkeley, Temuera Morrison, Steve Railsback and Victoria Rowell. 98 minutes. Colour. / 2017: a Dystopian Near Future America with ...
Moores, George
(? -? ) UK author of The British Empire in 1950: A Peep into the Future (1931 chap), a lightly fictionalized Future History in which it is assumed (World War Two not here being predicted) that the British Empire survives. [JC]
Papp, Desiderio
(1895-1993) Hungarian historian of science, in Europe until forced to flee by Nazi Germany, and mostly in Argentina from 1942, in Chile from 1961; his first name is given variously as Desiderio or Desiderius though in its original, Hungarian form it was almost certainly Dezső. His nonfiction speculative text, Zukunft und Ende der Welt: Ein Buch über die Geschicke von Menschheit und Erde (1932; trans Henry James Stenning as Creation's Doom 1934), assesses ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...