SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 15 May 2024
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
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 ...
Lift, De
Film (1983; vt The Lift). Sigma Films. Directed by Dick Maas. Written by Mass; music by Maas. Cast includes Huub Stapel and Willeke Van Ammelrooy. 99 minutes. Colour. / This neat Dutch Horror film with an sf rationale, dubbed atrociously into English, tells of a homicidal lift (elevator) in a high-rise office building. The lift is controlled by an organic, living Computer (biochip), manufactured in Japan, which ...
Goldston, Robert C
(1927-1982) US author of crime fiction, also under the pseudonym James Stark; of fantasies such as his first novel, The Eighth Day (1956), dealing with miracles in a religious context; and of The Shore Dimly Seen (1963), in which the passengers and crew of a yacht at sea apprehend a nuclear Holocaust from a distance as they approach a seemingly deserted America. / This author should not be confused with the artist James Stark who ...
Langelaan, George
(1908-1972) French-born UK author and journalist, an intelligence agent in World War Two (underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance), active for many years in the USA before returning to France; his first work of genre interest in English became his most famous story, "The Fly" (June 1957 Playboy), the macabre tale of an unsuccessful experiment in Matter Transmission in which the hapless ...
Hiller, Neil W
(1947-1989) US author of some works of sf interest, all in collaboration with his wife, B B Hiller, who see for details. [JC]
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. His first professional publication was a long sf-tinged poem, "Carcajou Lament" (Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959] Triquarterly); he only began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and sf proper with ...