SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 3 June 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.
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Franklin, H Bruce
(1934-2024) US critic and academic, a cultural historian in various positions at Stanford University from 1961, in that year giving one of the earliest university courses in sf in the USA. In 1972, despite holding tenure, he was dismissed by Stanford for making speeches allegedly inciting students to riot against the university's involvement in the Vietnam War – a case well known to those interested in questions of academic freedom. He became full professor, again with tenure, at Rutgers ...
Masters, John
(1914-1983) Indian-born soldier and author, in the UK from an early age; after serving in World War Two, gaining an OBE in 1945, he resigned his commission with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, moved to the US in 1948 and began a series of novels (theoretically thirty-five in number) about British rule in India; the best-known of these is probably Bhowani Junction (1954). Of sf interest are Near Future thrillers like The Breaking Strain ...
Cover, Arthur Byron
(1950- ) US author. He was involved in the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop in 1971-1972, and began publishing sf with "Gee, Isn't He the Cutest Little Thing?" in Alien Condition (anth 1973) edited by Stephen Goldin. His first novel, Autumn Angels (1975), the first of the very loose Autumn Angels sequence, with introduction by ...
Varley, John
(1947- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Picnic on Nearside" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in August 1974 and who was soon thought to be the most significant new writer of the late 1970s. He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments like cloning (see Clones), many of his protagonists were women (see ...
From the Earth to the Moon
Film (1958). Waverly/RKO. Directed by Byron Haskin. Written by Robert Blees, James Leicester, adapted from Jules Verne's De la terre à la lune (1865) and Autour de la lune (1870), the two published together in English translation as From the Earth to the Moon (1873). Cast includes Joseph Cotton, Deborah Paget and George Sanders. 100 minutes. Colour. / Using a new ...
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 ...