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Sunday 12 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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Auster, Paul
(1947-2024) US translator, screenwriter and author, active from around 1970, who came to sudden attention – after years of unrecognized work, culminating in an undemanding Baseball mystery, Squeeze Play (1984) as by Paul Benjamin – with a series of Fabulations playing on detective genres and the French nouveau roman. City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and ...
Hughes, Zach
Working name for much of his sf of US author Hugh Zachary (1928-2016), who also used various other pseudonyms for sf, including Evan Innes, Peter Kanto, Pablo Kane and Marcus Van Heller; he used his real name for other work from 1961 on, at least 100 titles in all. His novels in the sf field were expertly devised and readable and frequently surprisingly dark in their implications. The Book of Rack the Healer (July/August-September/October 1972 If; 1973) and ...
Hunt, Walter H
(1959- ) US computer programmer and author whose Dark Wing sequence of Military SF adventures – comprising The Dark Wing (2001), The Dark Path (2003), The Dark Ascent (2004) and The Dark Crusade (2005) – traverses an unusually long time-span from the first volume, featuring the dominating human admiral nicknamed the Black Wing who sacrifices himself to resolve the ...
Dowling, Steve
(1904-1986) UK artist known almost solely for the Comic strip Garth (which see for bibliography), although he worked on other strips as well. He received his formal art training from the Liverpool School of Art and then the Westminster School of Art, before taking to comics art. He illustrated Garth – briefly scripting it at the outset until author J H G "Don" Freeman was brought in – from 1943 until his ...
Final Countdown, The
Film (1980). Bryna Company/United Artists. Directed by Don Taylor. Written by David Ambrose, Gerry Davis, Thomas Hunter, Peter Powell, based on a story by Hunter, Powell, Ambrose. Cast includes Kirk Douglas, Charles Durning, James Farentino, Katharine Ross and Martin Sheen. 105 minutes. Colour. / The Nimitz, a (real) aircraft carrier on manoeuvres off Hawaii in 1980, is caught in a strange storm which turns out to be a time-warp (see ...
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 ...