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Friday 17 January 2025
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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Wooldridge, C W
(1847-1908) UK physician and author, in USA from childhood. In his Near Future Utopia, Perfecting the Earth: A Piece of Possible History (1902), a charismatic figure resembling Theodore Roosevelt begins to transform America by setting the army – idle in 1913 because there are no wars about to happen – to the task of building the West on utopian lines. Their climactic achievement is a utopian ...
Hay, John
Working name of Australian author and farmer John Warwick Dalrymple-Hay (1928- ). In his sf novel, The Invasion (1968), World War Three begins after a US test missile devastates China, whose retaliation includes a nuclear attack on the coastal cities of Australia. Inland survivors band together to resist the invaders. [JC]
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell
Japanese film (1968); original title Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro; vt Goke, the Vampire; vt Bodysnatcher from Hell; vt Body-Snatcher Goke. Shochiku. Directed by Hajime Sato. Written by Kyuzo Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku. Cast includes Kathy Horan, Nobuo Kaneko, Kazuo Kato, Eizo Kitamura, Hideo Ko, Yuko Kusunoki, Keiichi Noda, Tomomi Sato, Masaya Takahashi and Teruo Yoshida. 84 minutes. Colour. / On a Japanese airliner the politician Mr ...
Hyams, Peter
(1943- ) US cinema director, producer and cinematographer, formerly a jazz drummer and television news anchorman; his first directed film of genre interest was Capricorn One (1977), which he also wrote: an exercise in Paranoia in which, with the unwise cooperation of NASA, a Mars mission is faked (Hyams is fond of government-based conspiracies). The next and perhaps his best is ...
Kealing, Ethel Black
(1877-1960) US poet and author of one Lost Race novel, Desra of the Egyptians: A Romance of the Earlier Centuries (1910); it is set in Egypt. [JC]
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 ...