SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 25 January 2022
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 24 January 2022
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Estonia
A full entry for sf in the Republic of Estonia, the Northern European country absorbed into the USSR in 1940 (with a period of Nazi occupation 1941-1944) and independent since 1990/1991, must await a contributor fluent in its language and able to report from the inside on the development of the genre in that region and on untranslated works. Meanwhile, relevant authors given full entries in this encyclopedia are Friedebert Tuglas, who was active from the early twentieth century and well into ...
Seltzer, David
(1940- ) US Cinema scriptwriter, director and producer who scripted the docudrama The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) and is best known for scripting The Omen (1976), an influential Horror film which spawned sequels and remakes; Seltzer has expressed disquiet over its contribution to the serious acceptance, notably in US fundamentalist Religion, of a demonic anti-Christ figure heralding the End of the World. Also of sf relevance is the film Prophecy (1979), a disappointing ...
Zindell, David
(1952- ) US author with a degree in mathematics who began publishing sf with "The Dreamer's Sleep" for Fantasy Book in December 1984. His career properly began, however, when he won the Writers of the Future Contest with "Shanidar" (in L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, anth 1985, ed Algis Budrys), which was modified into the first part of his first novel, the long and remarkable Neverness (1988), the first instalment of the Neverness/Requiem for Homo Sapiens ...
Kipple
Term originating in Fandom, denoting useless or unwanted household junk and ephemera which seems to reproduce itself at the expense of non-kipple possessions – a low-key, domestic manifestation of Entropy (which see). The word spread from Fan Language into popular culture via the novels of Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) discusses it at some length, and there is a fleeting appearance in A Maze of Death (1970). Ted Pauls (1942-1997) had introduced it as the title ...
Dawn of the Dead
Film (1978; vt Zombie Italy; vt Zombies UK). Laurel. Directed by George Romero. Written by Romero, with Dario Argento (who also cowrote the music) as script consultant. Cast includes David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H Reininger and Gaylen Ross. 127 minutes, cut to 125 minutes. Colour. / The first of three sequels to Night of the Living Dead (1968) – the others are Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005) – this was (unusually) premiered in Italy, under the title Zombie. ...
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 ...