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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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Vallejo, Dorian
(1968- ) American artist, son of noted artist Boris Vallejo. After receiving formal training in art at his father's insistence, Vallejo began garnering cover assignments in his early twenties, mostly for Ace Books and Avon Books. Understandably, his covers were sometimes reminiscent of his father's style, particularly while illustrating works of Sword and Sorcery, as for example his 1991 covers for Michael Moorcock's Blades of Mars (1965) and Barbarians of Mars (1965), ...
Higginbottom, W Hugh
(1881-1937) UK artist and author of King of Kulturia (1915), a Near Future Satire on the deficiencies of German culture as they were revealed during World War One; in this period, satirical English takes on Germany commonly spelled culture with a k. The tale, set in 1920, is digressive. [JC]
Cowboys & Aliens
Film (2011). Dreamworks Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Reliance Entertainment in association with Relativity Media present an Imagine Entertainment/KO Paper Products/Fairview Entertainment/Platinum Studios production. Directed by Jon Favreau. Written by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby; story by Fergus & Ostby and Steve Oedekerk, based on Cowboys and Aliens (graph 2006) by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. Cast includes Keith Carradine, ...
Schneider, Robert
(1961- ) Austrian playwright and author whose first novel, Schlafes Bruder (1992; trans Shaun Whiteside as Brother of Sleep 1995), edges into sf-tinted Fantastika through the life of its protagonist, Jophannes Elias Alder, a nineteenth-century musical prodigy (see Music) whose precocious compositions are made possible through what might be described as a Psi Power: an ability essentially to hear all sounds, and to transform them. A kind of liebestod overwhelms him aged ...
Overpopulation
In 1798 the UK economist Thomas R Malthus (1766-1834) published his Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, arguing that a Utopian situation of peace and plenty would be impossible to achieve because the tendency of populations, in the absence of the checks of war, famine and plague, to increase exponentially would result in society's continually outgrowing its resources. In the second edition of 1803, replying to criticism, he introduced another ...
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 ...