SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 19 May 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 15 May 2024
Sponsor of the day: Handheld Press
Corman, Roger
(1926-2024) US film-maker, a number of whose films are sf. Born in Los Angeles, he graduated in engineering from Stanford University in 1947, and spent a period in the US Navy and a term at Oxford University before going to Hollywood, where he began to write screenplays; his first sale was Highway Dragnet (1954), a picture he coproduced. He soon formed his own company and launched his spectacularly low-budget career. From 1956 he was regularly associated with ...
Thomson, A A M
(1894-1968) UK author, who in later life became well-known as a cricket columnist, writing as A A Thomson; he was in active service during World War One. Thomson is of some interest for his first book, The World of Billiam Wissold (1927), a Parody of the club-bore style of H G Wells's The World of William Clissold: A Novel at a New Angle (1926 3vols), which incorporates a ...
Christie, Jason
(circa 1980- ) Canadian poet (see Canada; Poetry) who is of sf interest for the poems assembled in i-Robot: Poetry (coll 2006), comprising prose-poems set in a Near Future world where Robots, and the distributed networks they link to, are sentient. [JC]
Can
German experimental prog-rock band, active in the 1970s, who released a number of sf-themed albums. Founded in 1968 by bassist Holger Czukay (1938-2017), keyboard-player Irmin Schmidt (1937- ) who had both studied under avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, together with guitarist Michael Karoli (1948-2001), and drummer Jaki Liebezeit (1939- ). Initially the band worked with the American vocalist and lyricist David Johnson; but he was replaced ...
Wessex, Martyn
Pseudonym of UK author P F Little (? - ) for two sf novels written for Robert Hale Limited: The Slowing Down Process (1974), in which a space capsule returns to Earth with a dead astronaut and the seeds of a lethal Pandemic; and Chain Reaction (1976), where human fertility is endangered by the effects of a new Drug. [JC/DRL]
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 ...