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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.
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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 ...
Ward, Richard Heron
(1910-1969) UK actor, playwright, director, broadcaster and author, active from the early 1930s, some of whose nonfiction is of interest, including The Powys Brothers: A Study (1935), whose subjects include John Cowper Powys, and A Drug-Taker's Notes (1957) as R H Ward, a strongly analytic description of the effects of LSD use (see Drugs). He is of sf interest for The Sun Shall Rise ...
Kramer-Rolls, Dana
(1940- ) US author of Ties to three series: Combat Command in the World of Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant: Cut by Emerald (1987) as Dana Kramer, a Gamebook tied to Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant and to the Combat Command universe; Warhorn: A Crossroads Adventure in the World of Lynn Abbey's Rifkind, Daughter of the Bright Moon ...
Moffett, Judith
(1942- ) US academic, poet and author; a professor at the University of Pennsylvania 1979-1994. She was first active as a poet, publishing two collections – Keeping Time (coll 1976) and Whinny Moor Crossing (coll 1984); the full-length study, James Merrill: An Introduction to the Poetry (1984), contains an extensive study of Merrill's work of greatest sf interest, ...
Machen, Arthur
(1863-1947) Welsh translator, actor and author, born Arthur Llewellyn Jones, his parents adding Machen apparently in an attempt to please a rich relative. The Welsh landscape of his childhood visually dominated his writings all his life, serving as a body English of the ecstasy of reality or realities only "visible" through words that meant more than they could literally say. He was in London for long periods from 1880. The death of his father in 1887 provided him with enough money to marry and ...
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 ...