SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 29 January 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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Harrison, William
(1933-2013) US academic, poet, screenwriter and author whose Roller Ball Murder (coll 1974; vt Rollerball: 13 Selected Stories 1975) contains the story "Roller Ball Murder" (September 1973 Esquire), which formed the basis for his screenplay for Rollerball (1975), in which the eponymous sport (see Games and Sports) serves as a safety valve to keep the world of 2018 otherwise at peace. The 1975 version of the film adheres fairly closely to the original story; the 2002 version (again see ...
Yerex, Cuthbert
Pseudonym of Canadian-born author Mary Estella Yerex (1867-1947), in the US from an undetermined point after 1883, when she married Arthur Cuthbert in Ontario; her Christopher Brand: Looking Forward (1934) is a relatively late response to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), in which the abolition of money, and other radical solutions, ends the Great Depression. [JC]
Kerner, Charlotte
(1950- ) German author of fiction and nonfiction primarily for the Young Adult market. Titles not yet translated include Geboren 1999: Eine Zukunftsgeschichte ["Born 1999: A Future History"] (1991) and Kopflos ["Headless"] (2008). Blueprint/Blaupause (1999; trans Elizabeth D Crawford as Blueprint 2000), filmed as Blueprint (2003), depicts the consequences of an obsessed mother's creation of a Clone daughter, who narrates the highly charged consequences of her upbringing. ...
Kreighbaum, Mark
(? - ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Field of Honor" for Midnight Zoo vol 2 #3 in 1992; in his Planetary Romance sequence The Pinch – comprising Palace: A Novel of the Pinch (1996) with Katharine Kerr and The Eyes of God: A Novel of the Pinch (1998) – the planet known as Palace is the focus of complex intrigues in Cyberspace and out. The Pinch itself is a sector of the home galaxy. [JC]
Samuel, Maurice
(1895-1972) Romanian-born translator and author, in US from 1914, best known for nonfiction studies on Jewish culture and issues. King Mob: A Study of the Present-Day Mind (1930) as by Frank K Notch is an early assault on the totalitarian implications of a Media Landscape created by advertising, in league with governments aspiring to gain mind-control over their citizens. Samuel is of some sf interest for The Devil That Failed (1952), whose protagonist, seemingly transformed while asleep into a ...
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 ...