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Friday 26 April 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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Libertarian SF
A political movement (see Politics) originating in and largely confined to the USA, libertarianism is a form of anarchism – or "minarchism", the desire for an extremely limited state – which emphasizes (nonviolent) competition rather than the voluntary cooperation proposed by the older strand of anarchist thinking, as exemplified by the writings of such theorists as Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) or, in the sf field, by Ursula K ...
Rhinehart, Luke
Pseudonym of US author George Powers Cockcroft (1932-2020), best known for his Dice Man books, a sequence beginning with his first novel, The Dice Man (1971; rev 1983). The tale dramatizes a philosophy of chance – with life decisions made according to a throw of the dice – which, given dramatic fictional form, leads to what might seem an advocacy of the acte gratuit; in its direct sequel, The Search for the Dice Man (1993), the son of ...
Ferry, Jean
Pseudonym of French screenwriter and author Jean André Medous (1906-1974) who also wrote as by Jean Lévy. Some of his scripts contain fantastic elements, but no sf. His involvement in Oulipo was strong, but was not directly reflected in his fiction. He is of interest for several untranslated studies of Raymond Roussel [not listed below], and for the fleeting but resonant intimacy with ...
Captain Midnight
1. Serial Film (1942). Columbia Pictures. Directed by James W Horne. Written by Basil Dickey, Wyndham Gittens, George Plympton and Jack Stanley, based on the radio serial Captain Midnight (1938-1949) created and written by Wilfred G Moore and Robert M Burtt. 15 episodes; total running time 270 minutes. Cast includes James Craven, Sam Edwards, Knox Manning (narrator), Dave O'Brien and Luana Walters. Black and white. / Highly ...
Journeyman Project, The
Videogame series (from 1993). Presto Studios (PS). Designed by David Flanagan. / The Journeyman Project is a series of linearly plotted graphical Adventure games dealing with Time Travel. Their designs emphasize graphical quality over interactivity, in a similar way to the popular fantasy game Myst (1993 Cyan Worlds, Mac, Win; 1994 Saturn; 1995 3DO, JaguarCD, PS1; ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...