SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Slow Glass
A glass-like substance based on Imaginary Science, which in effect has a refractive index so huge that light takes significant time – from seconds to many years – to pass through a sheet or block of the material. It thus functions as a limited Time Viewer. Bob Shaw coined the term in his fine story "Light of Other Days" (August 1966 Analog), where slow-glass ...
My Hero Academia
Japanese animated tv series (2016-current). Original title Boku no Hero Academia. Based on the Manga by Kōhei Horikoshi. Studio Bones. Directors include Kenji Nagasaki. Written by Kōhei Horikoshi and Yôsuke Kuroda. Voice cast includes Go Inoue, Kenta Miyake, Nobuhiko Okamoto and Daiki Yamashita. 99 24-minute episodes to date (plus three OVAs). Colour. / My Hero Academia is set in a world much like our ...
Bunce, Oliver Bell
(1826-1890) US playwright, publisher and author of The Story of Happinolande and Other Legends (coll 1889), the title story describing an egalitarian but exceedingly well-financed Utopia; something like universal income is provided to all residents. Another story here assembled, "The City Beautiful", contrasts the filth of New York – where Bunce was born and died – with a utopian city described in terms ...
Agriculture
It is not a subject that naturally lends itself to dramatic storytelling, but agriculture is nonetheless the activity that has long been the primary source of food for humans, and it will likely remain essential, in one form or another, in the future. Thus, some sf writers who look beyond heroic adventures to more broadly consider the future fate of humanity have addressed this mundane but vital profession. Sf stories about agriculture can be roughly categorized as follows: depictions of ...
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 ...