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Wednesday 25 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.
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Vairasse D'Alais, Denis
(circa 1635/1638-circa 1700) French soldier, linguist and author, the latter part of whose surname is sometimes given as Allais; in the UK for a number of years from around 1660 to 1772, when he returned to the Continent. He is of strong Proto SF interest for a complexly published Fantastic Voyage, its mode and contents showing the influence of Johann Valentin Andreae, though its narrative, shaped as a transaction of at least one exemplary Archipelago, may render it easier for modern readers to ...
Starfall
Role Playing Game (2015). Wordplay Games. Written by Paul Mitchener, based on the Wordplay game system by Graham Spearing. / Small Press Horror in SF roleplaying game that mines the transition of the gritty, pessimistic tenor (see Optimism and Pessimism) of the UK-specific Scientific Romance to the mainstream of Television and Cinema in the wake of World War Two. / Giant, beetle-like Aliens dubbed "Scarabs" destroy earth's twelve most populous Cities in the autumn of 1951, fortifying ...
Back to the Future
Film (1985). Amblin Entertainment/Universal. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg among the executive producers. Written by Zemeckis, Bob Gale. Cast includes Michael J Fox, Crispin Glover, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and Thomas F Wilson. 116 minutes. Colour. / One of the major sf hits of the 1980s, Back to the Future is a disarming, calculated and intelligent comedy about Time Travel. Teenage guitar-playing Marty (Fox), son of a tacky and ineffectual mother and father (Thompson ...
Coville, Bruce
(1950- ) US author of sf and fantasy, mostly the latter, almost exclusively juveniles. Of some sf interest are: Murder in Orbit (1987; vt Space Station ICE-3 1987); My Teacher Is an Alien (1989) and its sequels, My Teacher Fried My Brains (1991), My Teacher Glows in the Dark (1991), all three assembled as My Teacher Is an Alien: 3 Books in One (omni 1995), plus and My Teacher Flunked the Planet (1992); Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon #2: The Dark Abyss (1989), a ...
Demolition Man
Film (1993). Silver Pictures/Warner Bros. Directed by Marco Brambilla. Written by Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, Peter M Lenkov, based on a story by Lenkov and Reneau. Cast includes Sandra Bullock, Bob Gunton, Nigel Hawthorne, Denis Leary, Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone. 115 minutes. Colour. / In 1997 Los Angeles (see California), macho cop John Spartan (Stallone) – nicknamed "the demolition man" – is framed by his most recent arrestee, malicious supercriminal Simon Phoenix ...
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 ...