SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 23 May 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.
Site updated on 20 May 2022
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City of Ghosts
US animated online tv series (2021). Netflix. Created by Elizabeth Ito. Directors include Ako Castuera and Elizabeth Ito. Writers include Ako Castuera, Elizabeth Ito and Joanne Shen. Voice cast includes Blue Chapman, Angel Chipagua, Kirikou S'hai Muldrow, August Nuñez and Michael Ren. Six 19-minute episodes. Colour. / In Los Angeles (see California), Eva (Muldrow), Peter (Ren), Thomas (Chapman) and their leader Zelda (Nuñez) – all aged 5-7 years – have formed the ...
Jackson, Edward Payson
(1839-1905) Turkish-born US educator and author, of missionary parents, in America from 1845; of sf interest is A Demigod: A Novel (1886), published anonymously, in which a Eugenics programme, begun in Greece in the seventeenth century, generates in the late nineteenth century a Superman who boasts extraordinary strength and agility, plus a massive intellect, out of which pours Inventions galore, including a process by which artificial diamonds are created, and a superior hand-gun. [JC]
Dr Cyclops
Film (1940). Paramount Pictures. Directed by Ernest B Schoedsack. Written by Tom Kilpatrick. Cast includes Thomas Coley, Albert Dekker, Paul Fix, Charles Halton, Victor Kilian, Janice Logan, Frank Reicher, Frank Yaconelli. Circa 75 minutes. Colour. / The closeness by date to World War Two is deceptive, as Dr Cyclops, filmed in late 1939 for April 1940 release, may be the last sf film of that era to remain entirely innocent of any premonitions of a darker world. Its eponymous Villain might ...
David, James F
Pseudonym of US author James D Foster (1952- ), most of whose work has combined horror and sf, as in his first novel which starts the Thunder series, Footprints of Thunder (1995), in which an incursion of Dinosaurs into urban America is dealt with primarily in terms of the feelings aroused; and his second, Fragments (1997), in which the Cybernetic implications of combining a passel of idiot savants to generate a joint mind are subordinated to a horrific depiction of the ...
Shelton, Greg
(? - ) US author of an sf novel, Chasing the Cosmic Wind (1999), in which a ship carrying Aliens crashes into the Pacific; by a process of Identity Transfer, the aliens take over the minds of seven swimmers. As the tale progresses, interspecies relationships (see First Contact; Sex) begin to develop. [JC]
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 ...