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Wednesday 15 January 2025
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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Yanovsky, V S
(1906-1989) Russian physician and author, in France between 1927 and 1942, when he emigrated to the United States, whose nonfiction deals in popular terms with medical issues. He is of sf interest for No Man's Time (trans Isabelle Levitin and Roger Nyle Parris from Russian ms 1967), which W H Auden, in his introduction, describes through reference to J R R Tolkien's concept of the Secondary World. More precisely, ...
Johnson, William Oscar
(1931-2012) US author for Sports Illustrated and author, mostly nonfiction focused on professional sports; his sf works include The Zero Factor (1980), about a Near Future attempt to assassinate the American president, and Hammered Gold (1982), a thriller set at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles (see California), where the KGB causes trouble. [JC]
Crack in the World
Film (1965). Security Pictures/Paramount. Directed by Andrew Marton. Written by Jon Manchip White, Julian Halevy. Cast includes Dana Andrews, Alexander Knox, Kieron Moore and Janette Scott. 96 minutes. Colour. / An attempt to use a nuclear device to tap geothermal energy from deep within the Earth causes a large and ever increasing crack in the crust. A bid to halt the process with a further nuclear explosion sends into space a large chunk of the ...
Flying Saucers over Istanbul
Turkish film (1955; original title Ucan Daireler Istanbulda). Birsel Film. Directed and written by Orhan Erçin. Cast includes Orhan Erçin, Mirella Monro, Zafer Önen, Türkan Samil and Özcan Tekgül. 73 minutes. Black and white. / A lonely hearts club for rich but unattractive women hires belly-dancers to lure potential husbands to the venue; they are delighted when two men turn up, but the men are Sapsal (Önen) ...
Casparian, Gregory
(1856-1942) Turkish-Armenia-born painter, photo-engraver and author, whose distant Near Future sf novel, An Anglo-American Alliance: A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future (1906), frames its central story with a description of a twentieth-century world dominated by America and the UK; Technology has advanced in various ways; Sex can be determined prenatally; ...
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 ...