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Monday 20 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 ...
Johns, W E
(1893-1968) UK air pilot, who served variously with the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force throughout World War One until shot down and captured on 16 September 1918, and later author, who began producing boys' action adventures in 1930. His normal byline was Captain W E Johns (a rank he did not in reality attain, having risen no higher than Flying Officer). His total output exceeded 200 volumes, his popularity exceeding any other twentieth-century British ...
Hinton, C H
(1853-1907) UK author, in Japan from 1887 (subsequent to an 1886 conviction and three-day sentence for bigamy) and in the USA from 1892. He began publishing work of speculative interest with What Is the Fourth Dimension? (Michaelmas 1880 Dublin University Magazine; 1884 chap), which was assembled with eight further essays and stories about the fourth and other Dimensions in space and time: five altogether in the first series of ...
Scott, Alan
(1947- ) UK author whose sf novel, Project Dracula (1971; vt The Anthrax Mutation 1976), features an explosion in a Near Future UK research facility in a Space Station, which indirectly releases 1500 experimental bats infected with anthrax. A Pandemic is threatened (see Disaster). [JC/DRL]
Bringsværd, Tor Åge
(1939- ) Norwegian author and playwright. Born in the small town of Skien, Bringsværd moved to Oslo to attend university, and there in 1966 met Jon Bing at the first official meeting of the Oslo University sf club, Aniara, created by the initiative of Oddvar Foss; they later contributed by reading aloud stories they had translated. They were both inveterate sf readers in a country where sf literally did not ...
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 ...