SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 January 2025
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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Hjortsberg, William
(1941-2017) US screenwriter and author, much of whose work – like his first novel, Alp (1969), or his third, Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974) – hovers Equipoisally between a mildly gonzo Western American Magic Realism and genuine Fabulation. Gray Matters (1971), which is sf, grounds its fantastic episodes in a future Utopia where people are reborn (see ...
Warner, Anne
(1869-1913) US author of romantic fiction, in the UK from about 1903; of some sf interest is When Woman Proposes (1911), a Near Future tale set in an unnamed European country where a young woman, in love with a soldier who refuses to marry her on his low income, engineers a general strike of workers and military, bringing the land to a total halt until an equitable wage structure is established for all. [JC]
Boitard, Pierre
(1787-1859) French botanist, geologist and author, whose two works of sf interest are composed for young readers; each title appeared separately in 1830s journals, and was subsequently assembled in revised form in Paris avant les hommes (coll 1861; trans Brian Stableford as Journey to the Sun 2016). The framing narrative, in which a demon conducts a human interlocutor on a guided tour of regions of interest, is shared. "Etudes ...
Sky Monster, The
German silent film (1913). Eiko Film GmbH. Directed by Alfred Lind. Written by Erik Kay. Cast includes Hans Hubert Dietzsch, Gussy Holl, Max Laurence and Hermann Seldeneck. 42 minutes (some sources say 32). Black and white. / This appears to be a lost film. The original title was Amerika – Europa im Luftschiff ["America – Europe in an Airship"], subtitled Ein Zukunftsbild aus dem Jahre 2000 ["A Vision of the Future from the Year ...
Moss, Sarah
(1975- ) Scottish author whose sf novel, Cold Earth (2009), set in the very Near Future, movingly depicts the fate – indirectly, through letters they send off into the void – of six archaeologists trapped in Greenland in winter by a planet-wide Pandemic as the End of the World looms. In Ghost Wall (2018), a single geographical point ...
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 ...