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Friday 24 January 2025
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 24 January 2025
Sponsor of the day: Joe Haldeman
Lynch, David
(1946-2025) US actor, artist and musician and primarily filmmaker whose work extended Surrealism into mainstream Cinema and Television. Lynch's films tend to examine the uneasy truce between rationality and the unconscious mind by revealing how intimations of Sex, Identity and death make themselves felt in modern American communities. The term Lynchian was defined by David Foster ...
Clarke, A V
Professional working name of Aubrey Vincent Clarke (1922-1998), UK author and editor best known for his work in Fandom and Fanzines, beginning in 1947 and contributing to Slant in 1951-1952. In fan circles he wrote as A Vincent Clarke or Vince Clarke and, echoing the shorthand surnames of Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man (January-March 1952 ...
Thomas, Eugene E
(1894-? ) US author of occult works; those with some sf relevance include Fragments from the Past (1930), whose protagonist is sent by Timeslip to Atlantis, where he warns selected Atlanteans of the catastrophe to come; and Brotherhood of Mt Shasta (1946), whose protagonist meets Secret Masters Underground, who return him to ...
Whitham, John W
(1868-1952) US author of Interworld (1932), a tale set in a not clearly delineated Near Future where Homo sapiens remain backward on the home planet, but other civilizations flourish on Mars, which boasts high Technology and universal peace, and elsewhere. [JC]
Keyes, Thom
Working name of US-born screenwriter and author Thomas Francis Keyes (1942-?1995), raised in the UK but also active in Hollywood, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Period of Gestation" for Science Fantasy #67, September/October 1964. He also scripted an episode of Space: 1999 in 1976. Of his novels, All Night Stand (1966) is a hyperbolic rock-band novel that verges on the fantastic; ...
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 ...