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Monday 7 October 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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Coover, Robert
(1932-2024) US author who established a considerable reputation with his novels, in which Fabulation and political scatology mix fruitfully. His work could be seen to represent a Postmodernist intensification of the same milieu excoriated by Richard Condon; at times both authors seem to be describing a nightmare dream of orgy-choked life in the Late Roman Empire (see ...
De Abreu, Jorge
(1963-2016) Venezuelan biologist, editor and author of fantasy and science fiction short stories, the first published being "Trina" and "Sólo un juego" ["Only a Game"] in the 1986 debut issue of Cygnus – La Revista de Ciencia Ficción ["Cygnus – The Science Fiction Magazine"], to which he has been a regular contributor. He is best known as president of the Venezuelan Association of Fantasy and Science Fiction and as the founder in ...
Sunless Sea
Videogame (2014). Failbetter Games. Designed by Alexis Kennedy. Platforms: PC. / Expanding the world first seen in Fallen London (2009), Sunless Sea takes the player away from the smoke of Fallen London in order to sail and explore the mysterious Unterzee that surrounds it. The game is considerably different from the original, changing the genre of the game and expanding the compact, narratively dense world ...
Inception
Film (2010). Warner Brothers Pictures in association with Legendary Pictures and Syncopy. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Cast includes Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Leonardo di Caprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page and Ken Watanabe. 143 minutes. Colour. / Preposterous but sensationally successful inner-space heist movie about a team of Dream-Hacking psychological ...
Supervillains
Supervillains (see Villains) were an inevitable consequence of the emergence of Superheroes in Comics and other media, since it quickly became apparent that the pioneering superhero Superman (see DC Comics) and his similarly powerful counterparts could as a rule encounter no meaningful opposition from ordinary criminals to create ...
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 ...