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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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Pantell, Dora
(1915-1996) US teacher, technical writer and author of fiction for children, best known for her continuation of Ellen MacGregor's Miss Pickerell series of tales about Lavinia Pickerell, a highly adventurous New England spinster. Pantell wrote most her contributions as with MacGregor, who had left copious notes for continuations of the sequence, in which Pickerell applies her rigorous intellect to uncovering the scientific premises underlying ...
Quatermass
UK tv serial (1979; vt The Quatermass Conclusion). Euston Films/ITV. Produced by Ted Childs. Directed by Piers Haggard. Written Nigel Kneale. Cast includes Simon MacCorkindale, John Mills and Rebecca Saire. Four 60-minute episodes. Colour. Version for film release (but receiving general release only on videotape) titled The Quatermass Conclusion, 102 minutes. / This fourth and weakest of the Quatermass television serials (see below for ...
Out of This World
1. US tv series (1952). ABC TV. Produced by Milton Kaye. Narrated by Jackson Beck. One season of 25-minute episodes. Black and white. / Out of this World hovered between sf and lectures on science. In episode three, for example, directed by Milton Kaye and written by Robbie Robertson, we see a young couple in 1993 going to the Moon for a vacation and then telephoning their relations on Earth to give impressions of their holiday. Between these ...
Time Loop
The theme of a closed loop in Time appears in sf in two distinct senses. A classic form of Time Paradox (which see) comes into being when the chain of causality eats its own tail to leave a circular sequence of events with no logical starting point, as in Robert A Heinlein's two famous examples: "By His Bootstraps" (October 1941 Astounding as by Anson MacDonald) and "All ...
Barzevi, A H
(? -? ) US author of Migrants of the Stars: Being an Account of the Discovery of the Marvelous Land of Niames, and of the Secret of its Inhabitants (1931) with Marc F Keller, the protagonist of which travels by Balloon to a Lost Race of philosophers who have created a Utopia on a flying Island, from whence he is transported to the ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...