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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 ...
Havel, Václav
(1936-2011) One of the most prominent intellectuals of twentieth-century Czechoslovakia (see Czech and Slovak SF); author of plays and essays, a political dissident several times arrested by the communist government (for almost five years in sum), later the last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and first president of Czech Republic (1993-2003). Havel's writing expresses a deep interest in the human Identity, especially ...
Three Stooges Films
The Three Stooges were a US comedy team who debuted in vaudeville (music-hall) as part of Ted Healy and His Stooges in 1922 and went on to make 190 or more short films for Columbia Pictures, characterized like their stage act by often violent and abusive farce and slapstick. Long-running members were Larry Fine (1902-1975) and Moe Howard (1897-1975), with the third Stooge role variously taken by Howard's brothers Shemp Howard (1895-1955) and Jerome "Curly" Howard (1903-1952), by Joe Besser ...
Toombs, Alfred
(1912-1986) US author in whose Good as Gold (1955), a Satire set in Near Future Washington, District of Columbia, the Transmutation of gold, reversing the traditional alchemical process, produces shit. [JC]
Tomita
Working name of Isao Tomita (1932-2016), Japanese electronic musician. A pioneer in the popularization of synthesizer composition, Tomita cut his teeth recording electronic versions of famous works from the classical canon – some of these still sound very fresh, not least, his inventively varied rendering of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (1975) and his brisk version of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (1975). But, perhaps because the electronic synthesizer ...
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 ...