SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 28 September 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.
Site updated on 26 September 2022
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Hoffmann, Curtis H
(1956- ) US author of Project: Millennium (1987), a tale told within a Space Opera frame, as it is set on a distant world (Muspell's Planet) run by Computers for the benefit of a jaded populace; but which focuses on another planet which the Muspell AIs have populated with battalions of Heroes out of Earth's past, both mythic and historical, and have set them against each other to entertain their own humans (see Games and Sports). The tale focuses on the Conceptual ...
Carpenter, John
(1948- ) US film-maker. At USC Film School Carpenter collaborated with writer-actor-director Dan O'Bannon on Dark Star (1974), a student effort expanded successfully into a feature that attracted attention for its Absurdist humour and classical suspense, following the adventures of a Spaceship crewed by near-insane astronauts and dangerously unstable sentient bombs. That calling card enabled Carpenter to make Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), a very accomplished "urban ...
Magic
In the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1884-1928) "magic" is defined as "the pretended art of influencing the course of events ... by processes supposed to owe their efficacy to their power of compelling the intervention of spiritual beings, or of bringing into operation some occult controlling principle of nature". The lexicographer assumed that there is no difficulty in telling a "pretended" art from a real one, nor in distinguishing the "occult" from the scientific. Many sf ...
Hill, Ernest
(1915-2003) UK author who began publishing sf with "The Last Generation" for New Worlds in January 1964, and who published some stories of interest, most notably the Dystopian "Atrophy" (in New Writings in SF #6, anth 1965, ed John Carnell). His novels – the rather desultory Space Opera Pity about Earth (1968 dos); The GC Radiation (1971), in which a few Americans and Russians survive a world Disaster; and The Quark Invasion (1978), the latter two being written for Robert Hale Limited ...
King and the Mockingbird, The
French animated film (1980). Original title Le Roi et l'Oiseau. Les Films Paul Grimault, Les Films Gibé, Antenne 2. Directed by Paul Grimault. Written by Paul Grimault and Jacques Prévert. Voice cast includes Jean Martin, Pascal Mazzotti, Renaud Marx and Agnès Viala. 87 minutes. Colour. / Begun in 1948 as an adaption of Hans Christian Andersen's The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep (original title Hyrdinden Og Skorstensfejeren in Nye Eventyr ["New Fairytales"] (coll ...
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 ...