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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 ...
Madhouse
Japanese animation studio, based in Nakano, Tokyo and founded in 1972 by Osamu Dezaki, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Masao Maruyama and Rintaro (real name Shigeyuki Hayashi, confused by some sources with his brother Masayuki Hayashi), who were former employees of Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production studio (aka Mushi Pro). In 2004 the studio became a subsidiary of the Index Corporation; then, from 2011, of Nippon TV. / Madhouse's ...
Harper, Olive
Pseudonym of US poet, journalist and author Helen Burrell D'Apery (1842-1915) for at least two tales with some sf interest: The Show Girl: Or, the Cap of Fortune (1902), in which an Underground realm inhabited by a Lost Race of Immortal Greeks with Magic powers is found under Cyprus; and The Sociable Ghost [for subtitle see Checklist below] ...
Kraftwerk
Enormously influential group of German electronic musicians, formed by Ralf Hütter (1946- ) and Florian Schneider-Esleben (1947-2020) in 1970. The group achieved international fame as a quartet, with drummer Wolfgang Flür (1947- ) and Karl Bartos (1952- ), following the release of their fourth album Autobahn (1974). The 20-minute title track reproduces a car journey on its titular motorway, from the ...
Osborne, Duffield
(1858-1917) US lawyer and author of The Spell of Ashtaroth (1888), a Biblical fantasy featuring Joshua; of sf interest is The Secret of the Crater (A Mountain Moloch) (July 1897 Lippincott's Magazine as "A Mountain Moloch"; exp 1900), a tale whose frame narrator, after evoking H Rider Haggard and Jules Verne, presents to his readers the illustrative story of an explorer who discovers a ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was a long sf-tinged poem, "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly); he only began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf proper with ...