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Tuesday 8 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 ...
Time Opera
A potentially useful item of Terminology which has yet to be generally adopted. It seems to have been coined by Anthony Boucher in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, first as a description of Jack Williamson's The Legion of Time (May-July 1938 Astounding; rev 1952) in "Recommended Reading" (April 1953 ...
Cloud Atlas
Film (2012). Cloud Atlas Productions/X-Filme Creative Pool/Anarchos Pictures. Directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy (now Lilly) Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Written by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, and Lana Wachowski, based on the novel Cloud Atlas (2004) by David Mitchell. Cast includes Doona Bae, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, James D'Arcy, Keith David, Hugh Grant, David Gyasi, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Jim ...
MacMillan, Ian
(? - ) US author of Blakely's Ark (1981), an sf Disaster novel in which a virus Pandemic decimates humanity. [JC]
Slipstream
Film (1989). Entertainment Film Productions. Produced by Gary Kurtz. Directed by Steven M Lisberger. Written by Tony Kayden, based on a story by Bill Bauer. Cast includes Kitty Aldridge, Eleanor David, Mark Hamill, Ben Kingsley, Bill Paxton and Bob Peck. 102 minutes. Colour. / Unspecified ecological rape has led to great earthquakes and geological changes all over the world. A strong, constant "river" of wind, the Slipstream, blows always in one direction across a scarred landscape ...
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 ...