SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 5 June 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.
Site updated on 3 June 2023
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Firefox
Film (1982). Warner Bros. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Alex Lasker, Wendell Wellman, based on Firefox (1977) by Craig Thomas. Cast includes Warren Clarke, Eastwood, Nigel Hawthorne and Freddie Jones. 136 minutes. Colour. / The sf aspect of the film is a new Russian fighter, the MIG 31 or "Firefox", which can fly at Mach-5 and operates through electronic translation of the pilot's brain patterns (thought control). Eastwood is ...
Academic Journal
In strict definition these are critical journals about science fiction, featuring no fiction other than as reference, published by academic establishments. By wider acceptance, however, these can include other critical Magazines produced within the science fiction fraternity which provide serious discussion and analysis of the genre to academic standards. / Academic interest in sf did not fully emerge until the 1970s (see ...
Egan, Beresford
(1905-1984) UK artist, illustrator and author, in South Africa from 1910 to 1926, who early established a reputation for sexually charged and otherwise transgressive illustrations for works like the 1928 translation of Pierre Louÿs's Aphrodite (1896); he also did covers for Aleister Crowley's Moonchild (1929) and Sean M'Guire's Lost Race novel Beast or Man? (1930): as in Crowley's ...
Damnation Alley
Film (1977). Landers-Roberts/Zeitman/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Jack Smight. Written by Alan Sharp, Lukas Heller, based on Damnation Alley (1969) by Roger Zelazny. Cast includes George Peppard, Dominique Sanda and Jan-Michael Vincent. 95 minutes cut to 91 minutes. Colour. / In this travesty the solitary, snarling, Hell's Angel protagonist of Zelazny's Post-Holocaust novel has become four ...
Terminator, The
Film (1984). Cinema '84/Pacific Western/Orion. Produced by Gale Anne Hurd. Directed by James Cameron. Written by Cameron, Hurd. Cast includes Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. 107 minutes. Colour. / In 2029 CE a vicious Future War between humans and Machines is raging. To ensure their victory, the machines send back a ...
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 ...