SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 5 October 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 3 October 2023
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Superman [film]
Film (1978). Dovemead/International Film Production. Directed by Richard Donner. Written by Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton, with Tom Mankiewicz as "creative consultant"; based on a story by Puzo. Cast includes Ned Beatty, Marlon Brando, Jackie Cooper, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Valerie Perrine and Christopher Reeve. 143 minutes. Colour. / Superman's visit to the wide screen was long delayed, ...
Keene, Day
Pseudonym of US author Gunnar Hjerstedt (1904-1969), mostly of detective novels and film and television scripts. In his sf novel, World without Women (1960) with Leonard Pruyn, the few remaining women find themselves in Dystopian circumstances (see Women in SF), though it is (unusually) the men who are most often punished for violating scarcity taboos. [JC]
Frankowski, Leo A
(1943-2008) US author known principally for his Alternate-History series, the Adventures of Conrad Stargard: The Cross-Time Engineer (1986), The High-Tech Knight (1989) and The Radiant Warrior (1989), all three assembled as Conrad Stargard: The Radiant Warrior (omni 2004); plus The Flying Warlord (1989), Lord Conrad's Lady (1990) and Conrad's Quest for Rubber ...
Kagan, Norman
(1943- ) US film researcher and author whose occasional sf stories – from "The Mathenauts" for If in July 1964 through "Counter Ecology" (in Tomorrow Today, anth 1975, ed George Zebrowski) – have sometimes dealt vigorously and amusingly with Mathematics as a subject, and tend to feature extroverted mathematicians as protagonists in ...
Spofford, Harriet Prescott
(1835-1921) US author, much of whose work was Fantasy or Supernatural Fiction [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], beginning with her first novel, Sir Rohan's Ghost: A Romance (1860) anonymous. Several tales of interest are assembled as "The Amber Beads" and Other Stories (coll 1989), its title story – "The Amber Beads" (January-February 1860 ...
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 consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf ...