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Saturday 25 June 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.
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Alligator People, The
Film (1959). Associated Producers. Directed by Roy Del Ruth. Written by Orville H Hampton from a story by Hampton, Charles O'Neal, and Robert M Fresco (uncredited). Cast includes Bruce Bennett, Lon Chaney, Richard Crane, Beverly Garland, Douglas Kennedy and George Macready. 73 minutes. Black and white. / Joyce Webster (Garland) goes to see two psychiatrists, Dr Eric Lorimer (Bennett) and Dr Wayne MacGregor (Kennedy) over recurring nightmares she is suffering from. They give her "truth ...
Whittington, Harry
(1915-1989) US author, principally of westerns and hard-boiled detective fiction. Of sf relevance is one Tie to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968), being The Man from U.N.C.L.E. #2: The Doomsday Affair (1965). Here a Villain codenamed Tixe Ylno ("Exit Only") – somewhat reminiscent of James Bond's adversaries, with a complex HQ installation where the final confrontation occurs – plots to destroy the world but is inevitably prevented. Whittington also contributed four lead novellas ...
Misfits of Science
US tv series (1985-1986). James D Parriott Productions/Universal Television. Created by Tim Kring, Parriott. Produced by Morrie Ruvinsksy, Harry Longstreet, Renee Longstreet. Cast includes Courtney Cox, Kevin Peter Hall, Dean Paul Martin and Mark Thomas Miller. One pilot film plus sixteen fifty-minute episodes. Colour. / In this short-lived series, several young people are brought together by a government-sponsored scientific think tank called Humanidyne to form a Superhero team. Their ...
Reed, Clifford C
(1911-? ) South African-born author and civil servant, in UK from 1950, who began publishing sf with "Jean-Gene-Jeanne" in Authentic Science Fiction in November 1954. In Martian Enterprise (fixup 1962) escaped convicts learn slowly how to create a community on a new planet (see Colonization of Other Worlds). [JC]
Notes on Content
The notes below, from the 1993 second edition, are largely unrevised. In general we have been able to relax many constraints previously forced on us by the space limitations of a single printed volume. Some authors of short stories only, like Vance Aandahl, appeared in the first edition, were cut to save space in the second and are now restored; there are similar cases among print magazines not exclusively devoted to sf but of considerable sf interest, such The Black Cat, and borderline-sf ...
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 ...