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Wednesday 17 August 2022
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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Meacham, Beth
(1951- ) US author and editor, married to Tappan King from 1978. She worked first as an sf bookseller before joining Ace Books in 1981, where she developed the careers of Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card and Tim Powers, among others; she also discovered James P Blaylock and oversaw the revived Ace SF Specials. She left Ace for Tor Books in 1984, where as head of sf and fantasy she supervised the company's unusually large sf editorial staff and worked with authors like Card, ...
Orcutt, Emma Louise
(? -? ) US author of a Lost Race novel, The Divine Seal (1909), which begins, unusually, somewhere in the distant future, after geological upheavals have brought Atlantis back to the surface; the discovery there of ancient tablets tells of an even more ancient race, the Zallallah, the entrance to whose Underground world is at the North Pole; the inhabitants themselves remain in Suspended Animation. [JC]
Thomson, Amy
(1958- ) US author whose first novel, Virtual Girl (1993), cunningly updates the Icon of the female Robot, long a locus for uneasy speculation among older sf writers (see Feminism). Maggie, the protagonist of this Near-Future tale, is an AI and consequently illegal, as independent artificial intelligences have been outlawed. More humanely, less sharply, but with a happier outcome than the robot Bildungsromanen for which John Sladek became best-known, Virtual Girl carries ...
Carolina Cannonball
Film (1955). Republic Pictures. Associate Producer: Sidney Picker. Directed by Charles Lamont. Written by Barry Shipman from a story by Frank Gill Jr. Cast includes Leon Askin, Judy Canova, Andy Clyde, Ross Elliott, Jack Kruschen and Sig Ruman. 73 minutes. Black and white. / In the ghost town of Roaring Gulch, Nevada, Judy (herself) and her grandfather Rutherford Canova (Clyde) are the only remaining residents. Nevertheless they maintain the Carolina Cannonball, a trolley train, in part ...
Star Trek: Picard
US tv series (2020-current). CBS Television Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, Secret Hideout. Created by Kirsten Beyer, Michael Chabon and Akiva Goldsman. Showrunner Michael Chabon. Directed by Doug Aarniokoski, Chabon, Hanelle M Culpepper, Jonathan Frakes, Akiva Goldsman and Maja Vrvilo. Written by Kirsten Beyer, Chabon, James Duff, Akiva Goldsman, Samantha Humphrey, Alex Kurtzman, Ayelet Waldman and Nick Zayas. Cast (four episodes or more) includes Isa Briones, Santiago Cabrera, Evan ...
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 ...