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Wednesday 6 December 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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Compton, D G
(1930-2023) UK author, born of parents who were both in the theatre; he increasingly lived in the USA after 1981. As Guy Compton, he published some unremarkable detective novels, beginning with Too Many Murderers (1962), and as by Frances Lynch produced some nonfantastic Gothics throughout his career; but soon turned to sf with tales almost always set in the Near Future, and anatomizing moral dilemmas within that arena: the future is very clearly ...
Telekinesis
An important item of sf Terminology, from the Greek words for "movement at a distance". Thus telekinesis is the ability to move objects by the power of the mind, which after Telepathy is the most commonly used Psi Power in sf. The word was not coined by an sf author: the Oxford English Dictionary gives an 1890 citation from Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. It appeared in ...
Criminali della Galassia, I
["Criminals of the Galaxy"] Film (1965; vt The Wild, Wild Planet). Mercury Film International/Southern Cross Productions. Directed by Antonio Margheriti credited as Anthony Dawson. Starring Tony Russel, Lisa Gastoni, Franco Nero, Massimo Serato, Carlo Giustini, Enzo Fiermonte. Written by Renato Moretti and Ivan Reiner. 93 minutes. Colour. / On Space Station Gamma 1 (see Space Stations), Commander Mike Halstead (Tony Russel) dislikes the ...
Robinson, Andrew J
(1942- ) US actor and author of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time (2000), a Tie to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine subdomain in the Star Trek universe; as an actor, he has also appeared in this Television series. [JC]
Slater, Philip
(1927-2013) US academic (who abandoned his career as a professor of sociology in 1971), actor, playwright and author who remains best known for such acute analyses of Western culture as The Pursuit of Loneliness (1970) and Earthwalk (1974). His How I Saved the World (1985), about nuclear Disaster, reiterates in spoof-thriller guise the lessons urged in his nonfiction; en passant he mocks conspiracy theories, occult ...
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 ...