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Friday 19 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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Massively Multiplayer Online Game
Term used to describe a type of Videogame in which large numbers of players interact with each other in a persistent Online World. Various forms exist, including Space Sims, exemplified by EVE Online (2003), and First Person Shooters, such as the science-fictional PlanetSide (2003 Verant Interactive, Win) ...
Ascendance of a Bookworm
Japanese animated tv series (2019-2022). Original title vt Honzuki no Gekokujō. Based on the Light Novel by Miya Kazuki. Ajia-do Animation Works. Directed by Mitsuru Hongo. Written by Mariko Kunisawa. Voice cast includes Show Hayami, Yuka Iguchi and Aya Uchida. 36 24-minute episodes (and two OVAs). Colour. / A Head Priest (Hyami) uses matching circlets to view a puzzling young child's past. We next see that child, ...
Parker, Richard
(1914-1990) UK author for children began publishing with the Escape from the Zoo sequence comprising Escape from the Zoo (1945 chap) (see Zoo), A Camel from the Desert (1947), in which territory the escaped animals find safety, and The Penguin Goes Home (1951), which carries the action further south. Of direct sf interest are The Hendon Fungus (1967), about fungal specimens from abroad proliferating in ...
Burgess, Anthony
Working name of UK composer and author John Anthony Burgess Wilson (1917-1993), known primarily for his work outside the sf field; as a composer he worked under his full name. Trained in English literature and phonetics, Burgess taught at home and in Malaysia 1946-1960, then returned to the UK (though later moved to Monaco) and became a full-time Protean man of letters, novelist, musician, composer and specialist in Shakespeare and James Joyce. ...
Carrington, Grant
(1938- ) US computer programmer, singer-songwriter and author who began publishing sf with "Night-Eyed Prayer" for Amazing in May 1971, though his later "After You've Stood on the Log at the Center of the Universe, What is There Left To Do?" (April 1974 Amazing) was more notable. With Thomas F Monteleone he wrote a play, U.F.O.! (performed 1979 Sandy Springs, Maryland), ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...