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Tuesday 14 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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Procházková, Emilie
(1878-1960) Czech author of several novels, including the ambitious multi-volume V kolobĕhu svĕtů ["As Worlds Circulate"] (1920-1922), which incorporates an abstracted Fantastic Voyage through the ornamented Solar System espoused in Theosophy. Of rather greater sf interest is Marẗané: Psáno Medijné (1922; trans ...
Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub
US Comic (1954-1955). Titan Publishing Co/American Comics Group. 7 issues. Artists include Ken Landau, Sheldon Moldoff and Ogden Whitney. Scriptwriters include Richard Hughes. 36 pages. Each issue was dominated by a 2 or 3 part Atomic Sub story, broken up by brief fiction and non-fiction pieces; from #3 there would also be a 5-7 page Atomic Sub story focusing on one of the Commandos, except for #7, which concerns one of the sub's guards: of these, only the "Doc" ...
Nesvadba, Josef
(1926-2005) Czech psychiatrist, doctor and author, who began his literary career with dramatic sketches but soon turned to detective stories and satirical sf, continuing the tradition of Karel Čapek. One of the best Czech sf writers (see Czech and Slovak SF) – though he wrote less after the late 1960s – and aside from Čapek the best known in the West, Nesvadba created ...
Proctor, Geo W
(1946-2008) US teacher, occasional illustrator, broadcaster and author who published fiction in various genres from 1972, some non-sf being as by Zack Wyatt; after routine Sword and Sorcery tales with soft-porn dollops like The Coming of Cormac (1974) as by Caer Ced, his first sf was The Esper Transfer (1978), a modest sf adventure whose Telepathic protagonist must escape various dangers. Although ...
Barry, Max
(1973- ) Australian author whose first novel, Syrup (1999) as by Maxx Barry, edged toward the fantastic in its spoof treatment of the modern corporate world; his second, Jennifer Government (2003), gains in the force of its attack through full immersion in a Near Future environment in which governments have become enfeebled, and international corporations rule the roost. Echoes of The Space Merchants ...
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 ...