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Wednesday 11 December 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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Smith, D Alexander
(1953- ) US investment banker and author who served as Treasurer of Science Fiction Writers of America 1987-1990 and has written several articles on Wargame strategy. The Marathon sequence comprising Marathon (1982), Rendezvous (1988) and Homecoming (1990) analyses in some depth a First Contact event, depicting with very considerable ...
Unknown Terror, The
Film (1957; vt Beyond Terror). Emirau Productions/Regal Films/20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Produced by Robert Stabler. Directed by Charles Marquis Warren. Written by Kenneth Higgins. Cast includes Charles Gray, John Howard, Sir Lancelot, Gerald Milton, Mala Powers, Paul Richards and May Wynn. 76 minutes. Black and white. / Explorer Jim Wheatley (Gray) disappeared six months before the film begins, while exploring a mysterious cave in southern Mexico. His sister Gina ...
Zamiatin, Yevgeny
(1884-1937) Russian author who graduated in naval engineering from St Petersburg Polytechnical Institute; his studies were interrupted by participation in the 1905 Revolution as a Bolshevik, prison and deportation (a sentence which was renewed 1911-1913). He began writing in 1908, withdrew from active politics, lectured at the Polytechnic Institute until his emigration, ran foul of the Tsarist censor in 1914, and built icebreakers in the UK 1916-1917. / Zamiatin wrote about forty volumes of ...
Stabenow, Dana
(1952- ) US author now best known for a nonfantastic private-investigator series, the Kate Shugak sequence set in the author's native Alaska. Her first fiction, however, was sf: the Star Svensdotter sequence comprising Second Star (1991), A Handful of Stars (1991) and Red Planet Run (1995), which describes the fraught Near Future expansion of Homo sapiens starwards, thwarted by ...
Droid [2]
Also known as "{species}droid" and "{species}DROID". US electro-funk band, whose debut release The Systematik Eviloution of {species}DROID (2005) mashes genre topics into an eclectic musical hybrid of contemporary dance styles. The name is presumably based on the sf coinage Droid as popularized in Star Wars (1977). [AR]
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 ...