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Wednesday 18 May 2022
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 18 May 2022
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Knebel, Fletcher
(1911-1993) US journalist and author, most of whose books are political thrillers, often hovering at the edge of sf. Three of these tales are of particular interest: Seven Days in May (1962) with Charles W Bailey – later filmed as Seven Days in May (1964), directed by John Frankenheimer – describes an attempted military coup in the USA; Night of Camp David (1965) tells of a Near-Future President of the USA whose Paranoia about enemies in America and abroad, obsession with ...
Biology
The growth of knowledge in the biological sciences has lagged behind that in the physical sciences; Newton's synthesis of Physics and Astronomy anticipated the linking of biology and chemistry by 200 years. The age of mechanical inventions began in the early nineteenth century, that of biological inventions is only just beginning, in the wake of the elucidation (during the 1960s) of the "genetic code" which controls naturally occurring biological processes of manufacture. Writers of speculative ...
Return, The
Russian animated film (1980; original title Vozvrashchenie). Soyuzmultfilm. Directed by Vladimir Tarasov. Written by Boris Ryakhovsky. Voice cast includes Viktor Balashov, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy and Vasiliy Livanov. 10 minutes. Colour. / Following a trip to Jupiter a cosmonaut is returning to Earth. However, his Spaceship is hit by meteorites, disabling his automatic landing equipment, meaning he will need to land manually. To keep him calm he is put into an artificial coma for the ...
Read, Diann Thornley
(1957- ) US soldier and author whose Saga of the Unified Worlds sequence, beginning with Ganworld's Child (1991) as Diann Thornley, is a galaxy-spanning Space Opera focusing on the trials and exploits of Tristan Sergey, a seeming orphan who has a vital role in a Lebensraum war between humans and Aliens. After he and his parents are reunited, the saga continues, with Military SF tropes beginning to dominate. The sequence was republished under Read's full name, and retitled ...
Lone Star
Shortlived Welsh rock band whose debut album Lone Star (1976) is of some genre interest: the tracks "A Million Stars" ("We can take a trip to a million stars / We can take a sky-train to Jupiter and Mars"), "A New Day" and "Spaceships" are fairly accomplished space-operatic thumbnails (see Space Opera). A second album Firing On All Six (1977) is less assured, and the group broke up soon after. [AR] links / Lone Star (MySpace)
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 and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...