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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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Hamilton, Patrick
(1904-1962) UK author, son of Bernard Hamilton; best known for plays like Rope: A Play, with a Preface on Thrillers (performed 3 July 1929 Strand, London; 1929 chap) and Gas Light: A Victorian Thriller in Three Acts (performed 5 December 1938, Richmond; 1939), whose title became a verb meaning to manipulate a victim so that they doubt their own sanity; and for several acute and supple novels of hopelessness in the UK of the 1930s. ...
Mechte Navstrechu
["Meeting a Dream Halfway"] Film (1963; vt A Dream Come True; vt Encounter in Space). Odessa Studios. Directed by Mikhail Karzhukov and Otar Koberidze. Written by Mikhail Karzhukov and Otar Koberidze, based on a draft screenplay by A Berdnik and Ivan Bondin. Cast includes Boris Borisenko, A Genesin, Larisa Gordeichik, Peeter Kard, Otar Koberidze, T Pochepa, Nikolai Timofeyev and Nikolai Volkov. 64 minutes. Colour. / On a Utopian future Earth, ...
Looper
Film (2012). FilmDistrict/TriStar Pictures. Directed by Rian Johnson, starting Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt. Written by Johnson. Colour. 118 minutes. / It is 2044 and Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, a paid killer who murders people sent back from the further future (thus eliminating any evidence of the crime). Obviously this Time Travel premise makes no sense but it exists to allow director Johnson to explore the possibility of ...
Box, The
Film (2009). Warner Bros. Pictures in association with Radar Pictures and Media Rights Capital presents a Darko Entertainment/Lin Pictures production. Written and directed by Richard Kelly. Based on "Button, Button" (June 1970 Playboy) by Richard Matheson. Cast includes Cameron Diaz, Frank Langella and James Marsden. 115 minutes. Colour. / The wife of a NASA scientist employed on the ...
Beyond Good & Evil
Videogame (2003). Ubisoft. Designed by Michel Ancel. Platforms: PS2 (2003); GC, XBox (2004); Win (2006); PS3, XB360 (2011). / Beyond Good & Evil is an action Adventure, displayed in a third person three-dimensional view. It is set on Hillys, a colony planet inhabited by humans and anthropomorphic aliens. Hillys is beautiful and peaceful, a harmonious world where even the criminals are ...
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 ...