SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 25 September 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.
Site updated on 18 September 2023
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Violet Evergarden
Japanese animated tv series (2018). Kyoto Animation. Based on the Light Novel by Kana Akatsuki (author) and Akiko Takas (illustrator). Directed by Taichi Ishidate. Written by Reiko Yoshida. Voice cast includes Yui Ishikawa, Hidenobu Kiuchi, Takehito Koyasu, Daisuke Namikawa. Thirteen broadcast 24-minute episodes, plus one OVA. Colour. / Violet Evergarden (Ishikawa) was a teenaged soldier in a recently concluded ...
Fireside Magazine
US professional Online Magazine available as an ebook by subscription only. It was produced by Brian J White in Boston, Massachusetts. White sought financing via crowdfunding; his intentions were to publish "great stories, regardless of genre". There were three preliminary issues dated Spring, Summer and Winter 2012, which were also downloadable, and which covered the spectrum of speculative fiction, with authors including Ken ...
Anime
Loanword in Japanese, derived from "animation", thought to be in occasional use since the rise of locally-made feature cartoons in the late 1950s, but popularized through its appropriation by Osamu Tezuka on the production of the Television series Tetsuwan Atomu ["Mighty Atom"] (1963; vt Astro Boy). Tezuka used the truncated term to refer to a truncated product, ...
Ryan, Thomas J
(1942- ) Canadian author, later in US, in whose sf novel The Adolescence of P-1 (1977) the titular Computer exceeds its design specifications, evolves into a sentient AI which interestingly attempts to gain sapience and power by establishing a distributed network of slaved versions of itself through the planetary telecommunications system (see Internet), and then must decide ...
Spurrell, H G F
(1877-1918) UK biologist, physician and author, in active service during World War One in the Royal Medical Corps until his death just before the Armistice. He is of some sf interest for Out of the Past (coll 1903), which contains two Prehistoric SF novellas plus a similar short tale, each set in a different Asian civilization prior to the founding of China; these stories are made available to the modern world ...
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 ...