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Wednesday 13 November 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.
Site updated on 11 November 2024
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Spacewar
Videogame (1962). Designed by Stephen Russell, J M Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen. Platforms: Mainframe, Arcade, Others. / While not the first game to be implemented using electronic hardware, Spacewar was the first such game with an original design, and the first to be widely distributed. Inspired by E E Smith's Lensman and Skylark series, the developers decided to write a game for the new PDP-1 minicomputer ...
Russell, Gary
(1963- ) UK author who has concentrated almost exclusively on Ties for the Doctor Who universe, beginning with The New Adventures: Legacy (1994) in the Doctor Who: New Adventures sequence, his most recent title being Doctor Who: Beautiful Chaos (2009); The Torchwood Archives (2008) is a tie to the Television spinoff series, ...
Lost on Earth
US tv series (1997). USA Network original productions for the USA Television Network. Produced by Mark Nasser, David Salzman, others. Directors included Gary Brown, Paul Fusco and Phil Ramuno. Writers included Wayne Kline and Frank Santopadre. Cast includes Tim Conlon, Stacy Galina, Paul Gleason and Drew Massey (voice only). 13 25-minute episodes. Colour. / At KTEE-TV station, reporter Dave Rudy (Conlon) is nearly fired after making a major mistake on the air; he accepts demotion to ...
Cocoon
Film (1985). Fox-Zanuck-Brown. Directed by Ron Howard. Written by Tom Benedek from a story by David Saperstein. Cast includes Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Jack Gilford, Steve Guttenberg, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Gwen Verdon and Tahnee Welch. 117 minutes. Colour. / Aliens disguised as humans come to Earth to revive their kinfolk who were abandoned millennia ago in cocoons on the ocean floor; the ...
Simmons, Geoffrey
(1943- ) US medical doctor and author whose first novel, The Z Papers (1976), is a Technothriller about an undiagnosable toxin; his first sf novel proper, The Adam Experiment (1978), set in a laboratory on an orbital Space Station, features an experiment in human procreation which runs up against the fact that Aliens have been monitoring ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...