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Thursday 10 July 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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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Science and Sorcery
Item of Terminology introduced in this encyclopedia for the genre-blending juxtaposition of sf and Fantasy settings, often presented as Parallel Worlds between which crossings may be made, and distinguished therefore from Equipoisal tales where any "crossings" tend to be integrated into the address of the tale, rather than working as transitions. (This use of crossings ...
van Herck, Paul
(1938-1989) Belgian (Flemish) author whose Sam, of de Pluterdag (1968; trans Danny De Laet and Willy Magiels as Where Were You Last Pluterday? 1973) is a Satire of a society in which the higher classes have access to an extra day of the week. Van Herck also wrote a collection of ingenious short stories, De Cirkels en andere fantastische verhalen ["The Circles"] (coll 1965). [JC] see also: ...
Kerr, Geoffrey
Pseudonym of UK actor, screenwriter and author Geoffrey Kemble Grinham Keen (1895-1971), son of the actor-manager Frederick Kerr (1858-1933); he saw active service in World War One. His writing for Cinema includes the scenario for the successful supernatural comedy-romance The Ghost Goes West (1935) directed by René Clair, in which a Scottish castle is dismantled and reassembled in Florida, accompanied by its ...
Ableman, Paul
(1927-2006) UK author and playwright who remains best-known for his first, non-fantastic novel, I Hear Voices (1958), though his first work of sf interest – "The Prophet Mackenbee" for Lucifer in 1952, about an sf author who surrounds himself with disciples in an absurd world – came earlier. The Twilight of the Vilp (1969) is not so much sf proper as an informed and sophisticated playing with the conventions of the genre in a ...
Residents, The
US avant-garde art-rock and multimedia collective. A policy of deliberate mystification, apparently integral to the group's artistic practice, makes it hard to say who the members are, although Homer Flynn (1945- ) and Hardy Fox (1945-2018) are known to have been involved. Promotional material for the group often includes images of four figures dressed in tails and wearing masks, each shaped as a giant eyeball, that entirely enclose their heads. Sf, of a left-field ...
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 ...