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.
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Roberts, Wilfred Joseph
(1898-1976) UK illustrator, active from the early 1930s, almost exclusively for magazines and publishers whose works were deemed ephemeral, so that much of his output remains obscure; he is thought to have normally signed his work W J Roberts, W F Roberts or L J Roberts, though much may be anonymous or under other names. He is credited in this encyclopedia for three volumes of the Gees sequence by E Charles Vivian writing as Jack Mann, ...
Murakami Haruki
(1949- ) Japanese author, translator and former jazz bar proprietor, inspired by such Americana as the stories of Richard Brautigan and the Absurdist SF of Kurt Vonnegut. Murakami's laconic prose is thick with American allusions and quite unlike the insular intricacies of earlier Japanese literature. His rambling, pensive characters, often ...
Metropolis
Film (1927). UFA. Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Cast includes Alfred Abel, Erwin Biswanger, Gustav Fröhlich, Heinrich George, Brigitte Helm, Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Theodor Loos and Fritz Rasp. Versions (selected) include original version 153 minutes; 1927 US Paramount version print 114 minutes; 1984 US reconstruction and adaptation by Giorgio Moroder 80 minutes; 2002 F W Murnau Stiftung ...
Cowdrey, Albert E
(1933-2022) US author, much of whose nonfiction work, as an historian for the US Army Center of Military History, focused on the medical branches of the military; he ended this career as Chief of the Special History Branch of the US Army. As an author of fantasy and sf he began to publish work of genre interest with "The Lucky People" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in February 1968 as by Chet Arthur, and continued under his own name with "The ...
Xenobiology
The study of lifeforms that may exist elsewhere than on Earth is called xenobiology or exobiology. It is one of the few legitimate sciences to have, as yet, no direct experimental application other than the tests carried out on the surface of Mars to see if the soil showed any of the biological activity that might be associated with the presence of microscopic lifeforms. (It seemed for a time as if some of the results of this experiment might be positive; it is now thought they were caused by ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was the long sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly), though he only began publishing sf reviews in 1964 and sf proper with "A Man Must Die" in New Worlds for ...