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Friday 17 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 ...
Last Chase, The
Film (1981). Argosy Films/Canadian Film Development Corporation/Crown International Pictures. Produced by Martyn Burke and Fran Rosati. Directed by Burke. Screenplay by Burke, Ray Moore, and C R O'Christopher from an original story by O'Christopher. Cast includes Lee Majors, Chris Makepeace, Burgess Meredith and George Touliatos. 101 minutes. Colour. / Sometime in the relatively distant Near Future after a Pandemic has ...
Matrix Reloaded, The
Film (2003). Warner Bros. Pictures in association with Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment presents a Silver Pictures production. Andy (now Lilly) Wachowski and Larry (now Lana) Wachowski. Cast includes Laurence Fishburne, Gloria Foster, Carrie-Anne Moss, Keanu Reeves, Jada Pinkett Smith and Hugo Weaving. 133 minutes. Colour. / As the machines burrow towards the human underground city of Zion, Neo and his associates re-enter the Matrix ...
Pern [series]
Very popular series of Planetary Romance/Science Fantasy tales by Anne McCaffrey (whom see for fuller discussion). The initial Pern stories are the Hugo-winning "Weyr Search" (October 1967 Analog) and the Nebula-winning "Dragonrider" (December 1967-January 1968 Analog), ...
Snell, Gordon
(? - ) UK broadcaster, screenwriter and author, mostly for younger children; for a youngish Young Adult market he published an sf series, the undemanding Tom's Amazing Machine sequence beginning with Tom's Amazing Machine (1988), and featuring a talking Computer named Zenda. [JC]
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 ...