SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 25 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.
Site updated on 18 September 2023
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Mathematics
The imaginations of pure mathematicians have provided sf writers with important motifs. For example, the notions taken from geometry and topology of a fourth and other Dimensions (which see for a listing of relevant sf stories) have the essential qualities of strangeness and mystery, making them an enjoyable struggle for the untrained intuition to accept. A surprising number of sf writers have been mathematicians, or at least have trained in mathematics; among ...
Hekkanen, Ernest
(1947- ) US-born author, in Canada from 1969, active from the early 1980s; much of his fiction brushes against the water margins of Fantastika, evoking a range of associations from Magic Realism to Franz Kafka. He is of sf interest for Dementia Island (1999), set in a hazily Near Future Dystopia whose ...
Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare
Japanese film (1968). Original title Yōkai Daisensō, vt The Great Yokai War. Daiei Film. Directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda. Written by Tetsurō Yoshida. Cast includes Yoshihiko Aoyama, Chikara Hashimoto, Takashi Kanda, Akane Kawasaki and Osamu Ōkawa. 80 minutes. Colour. / Seven thousand years ago a Monster (Hashimoto) began hibernating in the ruins of Ur, once capital of Babylonia; awakened thousands ...
Wilson, Richard
(1920-1987) US author and director of the News Bureau of Syracuse University until his retirement in 1982; he was instrumental in persuading many sf writers to donate their personal archives to the university's George Arents Research Library. Involved in sf Fandom from an early age, he was a founder of the Futurians in the 1930s, publishing his first sf story, "Murder from Mars", with ...
Harvey, M Elayn
(1945- ) US author whose sf novel, Warhaven (1987), the first volume of an incomplete Young Adult trilogy, puts its young protagonist through a series of trials, at the end of which he has clearly prepared himself to become one of the Guardians who covertly supervise a variety of spacefaring races (see Cultural Engineering; Secret Masters; ...
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 ...