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Saturday 2 July 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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Ingersoll, Ernest
(1852-1946) US naturalist, journalist – his column, The Natural History Club, appeared weekly from 1900 to 1938 – and author of much nonfiction, plus An Island in the Air: A Story of Singular Adventures in the Mesa Country (1905) a Lost World tale, the Island in question being an enclave hidden on the flat top of a mesa. [JC]
Douglas, L Warren
(1943- ) Pseudonym of US teacher, woodcarver and author Douglas W Lugthart, who began to publish sf with A Plague of Change (1992). This was followed in the Plague of Change sequence by Cannon's Orb (1994); the protagonist of the sequence – who is something of an anthropologist (like Warren himself) as well as a Computer expert – is hired by Aliens to examine the causes for the decline of a colony planet, though Space Opera concerns soon externalize his study ...
Wood, Charlotte
(1965- ) Australian author whose work has generally been nonfantastic. Of sf interest is The Natural Way of Things (2015), set in a very Near Future Dystopian Australia and centering on a group of women first drugged (see Drugs) then forcibly confined to a Keep deep in the outback. They discover that they are being punished (see Feminism; Women in SF; Sex) for the sin of behaving "badly" with powerful men. A Slingshot Ending leaves no surety over their possible release. ...
Terminal Man, The
Film (1974). Warner Bros. Produced, directed and written by Mike Hodges. Based on The Terminal Man (1972) by Michael Crichton. Cast includes Joan Hackett and George Segal. 107 minutes, cut to 104 minutes. Colour. / Segal plays a man who suffers from violent blackouts as a result of brain damage suffered in a car accident. Doctors use him as an experimental guinea pig: into his brain they insert electrodes linked to a tiny Computer implanted in his shoulder, so that when a convulsion starts ...
Mackworth, John
(1887-1939) UK soldier and author of The Menace of the Terribore (1936; vt The Raid of the Terribore: A Modern Adventure Story 1937), a Near Future adventure for boys in which an international criminal takes advantage of several Inventions, including a submarine capable of boring through the earth, to flummox British forces. [JC]
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 publishing sf reviews in 1964 and sf proper with "A Man Must Die" in New Worlds for November 1966, where much of his earlier criticism also appeared. This criticism, despite some studiously ...