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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 ...
Satifka, Erica L
(? - ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Automatic" in Clarkesworld for January 2007, set like much of her short work in a Dystopian urban Near Future populated by outlier figures, some of them modified humans, some of them artifacts. How to Get to Apocalypse and Other Disasters (coll 2021) generously represents this ...
Butler, Samuel
(1835-1902) UK artist, author, traveller and speculative thinker, whose family-induced sojourn in New Zealand 1859-1864 gave him raw material for Erewhon (see below) but did not cure him of his artistic inclinations; his best-known single work, the posthumously published autobiographical novel The Way of all Flesh (1903), describes the long conflict between Butler and his minister father, a conflict which also provided much of the force of the ...
Blish, James
(1921-1975) US author whose early career in sf followed a pattern typical of the generation whose early careers coincided with World War Two. He became involved in sf Fandom during the 1930s, and was an early member of the well-known New York fan group the Futurians, where he became friendly with such writers as Damon Knight and C M Kornbluth. ...
Fantasy Film Journal
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine printed on middle-grade paper. Published by Quarterly Nostalgia Graphics. Editor: unknown. Two numbered but undated issues in 1977. / Short-lived but well-produced publication which like so many others failed to obtain adequate distribution. #1 was largely dedicated to Star Wars (1977), but also featured material on Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman (see ...
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 ...