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Friday 17 January 2025
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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Conway, Gerard F
(1952- ) US author who began his career in Comics, writing some non-fantastic scripts for Marvel Comics; he began publishing sf with "Through the Dark Glass" for Amazing in November 1970. His first sf novel was The Midnight Dancers (1971). Mindship (in Universe 1, anth 1971, ed Terry Carr; exp 1974) is a ...
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell
Japanese film (1968); original title Kyuketsuki Gokemidoro; vt Goke, the Vampire; vt Bodysnatcher from Hell; vt Body-Snatcher Goke. Shochiku. Directed by Hajime Sato. Written by Kyuzo Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku. Cast includes Kathy Horan, Nobuo Kaneko, Kazuo Kato, Eizo Kitamura, Hideo Ko, Yuko Kusunoki, Keiichi Noda, Tomomi Sato, Masaya Takahashi and Teruo Yoshida. 84 minutes. Colour. / On a Japanese airliner the politician Mr ...
Arts
By virtue of its nature, sf has one foot firmly set in each of C P Snow's "two cultures", and sf stories occasionally exhibit an exaggerated awareness of that divide. Charles L Harness's notable novella "The Rose" (March 1953 Authentic) takes the reconciliation of an assumed antagonism between art and science as its theme, the author adopting the view that the emotional richness of art is necessary to temper ...
Finn, Ralph L
(1912-1999) UK author and journalist who published widely, collecting some of his short fiction as Collected Stories of Ralph L Finn (coll 1946 chap); in his notes on "This Sorry Scheme" (magazine publication undated), George Locke suggests that the tale prefigures Jack Finney's far more complex Time and Again (1970). Of some sf interest are three novels based on the time theories of J W ...
Langelaan, George
(1908-1972) French-born UK author and journalist, an intelligence agent in World War Two (underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance), active for many years in the USA before returning to France; his first work of genre interest in English became his most famous story, "The Fly" (June 1957 Playboy), the macabre tale of an unsuccessful experiment in Matter Transmission in which the hapless ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...