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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.
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Preston, Douglas
(1956- ) US author most of whose novels of sf interest have been with Lincoln Child; they are listed below for convenience, but for discussion see the entry for Child. The Wyman Ford sequence of Technothrillers, by Preston alone, comprises Blasphemy (2008), a Near Future tale in which a new supercollider threatens either to suck the world into a ...
Hervey, Harry
(1900-1951) US author who supplied stories (though he did not always write the scripts) for such films as Shanghai Express (1932) and Road to Singapore (1940), and who early in his career wrote two Lost Race novels, both set in the romantic East, Caravans by Night: A Romance of India (1922) and The Black Parrot: A Tale of the Golden Chersonese (1923), the latter set in the Malay Peninsula. [JC]
Molyneux, William
(1656-1698) Irish politician, scientist, soldier, philosopher, author of several speculative works; as a text that evokes Proto SF topoi, Dioptrica Nova: A Treatise of Dioptrics: in Two Parts [for full title see Checklist] (1692) is of sf interest for its inclusion of a kind of Fantastic Voyage to the Moon and other planets, though it is made solely at remote control, via telescope. ...
Quake
Videogame (1996). id Software (id). Designed by John Carmack, American McGee, Sandy Peterson, John Romero, Tim Willits. Platforms: DOS, Lin (1996); rev vt VQuake (1996); rev vt QuakeWorld (1996); Mac, Saturn, Mainframe (1997); rev vt GLQuake (1997); rev vt WinQuake (1997); Amiga, N64 (1998); PPC (2002); rev vt Quake Mobile WinPhone ...
Ottolengui, Rodrigues
(1861-1937) US dentist and author in whose sf novel, A Modern Wizard (1894), a Mephistophelean baulked Superman, who possesses Psi Powers, commits crimes against nature but oversteps in the end. He goes mad. [JC]
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 ...