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Tuesday 10 December 2024
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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Tralins, S Robert
(1926-2010) US author, prolific in several genres under more than one name and author of various borderline-sf tales, often involving Sex. They include: Dragon's Teeth (1973) as Keith Miles; the Valentine Flynn series beginning with What a Way to Go! (1966) and ending with Invasion of the Nymphomaniacs (1967), all as Sean O'Shea; Future Sex (1979) and Pleasure Planet (1979) as Starr Trainor (a ...
Chosen Survivors
Film (1974). Alpine-Churubusco/Metromedia. Directed by Sutton Roley. Written by H B Cross, Joe Reb Moffly, based on a story by Cross. Cast includes Jackie Cooper, Alex Cord, Bradford Dillman and Richard Jaeckel. 99 minutes. Colour. / This US/Mexico coproduction is a small-scale, inventive little exploitation movie whose plot-line is purest Paranoia. In a government test on stress reactions, 11 people are persuaded via ...
Rhys, Jack
Pseudonym of David Michael Heptonstall (1943- ), UK author of two sf novels for Robert Hale Limited, The Eternity Merchants (1981), a Space Opera, and The Five Doors (early version as by Michael Stall in New Writings in SF 23, anth 1973, ed Kenneth Bulmer; exp 1981), whose "doors" (the first of which appears on Earth) are ...
Virtual Reality
Since the mid-1980s, a popular item of sf Terminology, and for a century or so – in a rather more extended sense – a popular sf theme. In ordinary usage a virtual reality is a computer-generated scenario which seems real (or at least all-encompassing) to the person who "enters" it; one essential quality of virtual reality is that the person who enters it should be able to interact with it. To a degree all Videogames, as ...
Worlds Beyond
US Digest-size magazine; three issues, monthly December 1950 to February 1951, published by Hillman Periodicals; edited by Damon Knight. Worlds Beyond was divided between original and reprint material, and between sf and fantasy. New stories of note included "Null-P" by William Tenn (January 1951) and Harry Harrison's first story, "Rock Diver" (February 1951); ...
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 ...