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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.
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Bass, T J
Working name of US author Thomas J Bassler (1932-2011), who began publishing sf with "Star Seeder" for If in September 1969. He was almost exclusively associated with the Hive series that comprises his only book publications, Half Past Human (December 1969 Galaxy and November 1970 If; fixup 1971) and The Godwhale (1974), itself expanded from an earlier story, "Rorqual Maru" (January 1972 ...
eXistenZ
Film (1999). Alliance Atlantis and Serendipity Point Films present in association with Natural Nylon a Robert Lantos production. Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Cronenberg. Cast includes Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Don McKellar. 97 minutes. Colour. / eXistenZ, Cronenberg's first original script since Videodrome (1982), returns to his familiar themes of media, ...
Thorson, Alice Otillia
(1870-1929) US author of The Tribe of Pezhekee: A Legend of Minnesota (1901), in which Lost Race devices serve primarily to give depth to a local Minnesota legend. [JC]
Cox, Luther
(1925-1977) US engineer, salesman and author whose sf novel is The Earth Is Mine (1968), in which a familiar Shaggy God Story version of the Origin of Man is outlined: we are the Post-Holocaust descendants of long-ago settlers from another planet. Exploration of this theory leads to UFO contact and a visit to the other world. [DRL/JC]
Hardy, Thomas
(1840-1928) UK poet and author, a writer whose greatness is manifest throughout his extremely extensive oeuvre; initially most famous for the novels of his early career, beginning with Desperate Remedies (1871 3vols) and concluding with Jude the Obscure (1896), most of them set in the imaginary county of Wessex (roughly corresponding to Dorset). None of them contain explicit narrative elements of the fantastic, though as Brian W ...
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 ...