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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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Tékumel
Role Playing Game setting. Designed by M A R Barker. / Tékumel is a richly realized future milieu, depicted in a Science Fantasy mode analogous to that employed by Marion Zimmer Bradley for her world of Darkover. The setting is arguably comparable with J R R Tolkien's Secondary World of ...
Rushkoff, Douglas
(1961- ) US media theorist, much influenced by the work of Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), and author of two novels of sf interest. Ecstasy Club (1997) is a Near Future thriller in which the Drug Ecstasy is used in an attempt to gain Transcendence in Cyberspace. / His second novel, also sf, has an unusual history. It was first ...
KULT: The Temple of Flying Saucers
Videogame (1989; vt Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess in the US). ERE Informatique. Designed by "Arbeit von Spacekraft" (Johan Robson). Platforms: Amiga, AtariST, DOS. / In the future of The Temple of Flying Saucers, humanity has split into three distinct subspecies after a (presumably nuclear) apocalypse: the Psionically gifted Tuners, the physically mutated Protozorqs and the unaltered Normals. The player ...
Bowen, Robert Sidney
(1900-1977) US aviator, journalist, editor; his middle name is spelled Sydney, but is given as Sidney in his books; he also wrote nonfantastic tales as James Robert Richard. He served during World War One, in 1917 as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service, and from 1918 in active service as a pilot. After the war he worked for the London Daily News, and in his later career worked as an editor, including a stint as editor-in-chief of ...
Wakeman, Rick
(1949- ) UK musician. A classically trained pianist of remarkable technical facility, Wakeman played electronic keyboards in Yes, as well as latterly making a career for himself as a television personality. The relationship with the other members of Yes has proved on-off, his meat-eating, blokeish, Conservative personality jarring with the hippy transcendental vegetarianism of the other members; as a result he has alternated periods as a member of ...
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 ...