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Monday 20 March 2023
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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Holdstock, Robert P
(1948-2009) UK author with an MSc in medical zoology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He spent 1971-1974 in medical research before becoming a full-time writer, though he had published his first story, "Pauper's Plot", for New Worlds as early as November 1968. He wrote much of his short fiction soon after. Among the more notable stories are the novelettes "Travellers" (in Andromeda 1, anth 1976, ed Peter ...
Nude on the Moon
Film (1961). Moon Productions. Directed by Raymond Phelan and Doris Wishman. Written by Raymond Phelan and Doris Wishman. Cast includes Lester Brown, Marietta and Walter Meyer. 83 minutes. Colour. / While waiting to hear whether the government will finance his proposed rocket to the Moon, brilliant young Scientist Jeff Huntley (Brown) inherits three million dollars from his uncle and tells his colleague and mentor, the ...
Mercier, Louis-Sébastien
(1740-1814) French playwright and author best known for his sixty or more plays and for his anecdotal journalism; he was active in the French Revolution, being imprisoned during the Terror. He is of interest for his exceedingly popular Proto SF tale, L'an deux mille quatre cent quarante: Rêve s'il en fût jamais (1771 Holland; trans William Hooper as Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred 1772 2vols UK; French text rev ...
Dee, John
(1527-1609) UK mathematician, astrologer, cartographer, Neoplatonist and Hermetic philosopher influential in the complex currents of the sixteenth-century English Renaissance; along with figures like Roger Bacon, he is an underlying model for later generations of the magus: half-Scientist, half-sorcerer. Because Dee stands on the cusp of worlds, and because of the passion with which he attempted to arrive at the truth behind the ...
Baird, Thomas
(1923-1990) US art historian, a lecturer with the Frick Collection 1954-1957, latterly a professor of art; his several well-received novels, beginning with Triumphal Entry (1962), often dealt with art history; none of this early work contained any significant element of the fantastic, but Where Time Ends (1988) is a Young Adult tale of some interest set in a Near Future world threatened by biological ...
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 ...