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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.
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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 ...
Gammon, David
(1904-1996) UK author of two closely similar Lost Race novels, The Secret of the Sacred Lake (1947), set in a snake-infested jungle wilderness, and Against the Golden Gods (1947), set in the Australian outback. Both are designed for the Young Adult market; other titles by Gammon lack sf explanations. [JC]
Friesner, Esther M
Working name of US author Esther Mona Friesner-Stutzman (1951- ), who began publishing stories of genre interest with "The Stuff of Heroes" in Asimov's for September 1982, and who has remained prolific in shorter forms, with around 200 stories by the end of 2012; "Death and the Librarian" (December 1994 Asimov's) and "A Birthday" (August 1995 F&SF) both won ...
Bischoff, David F
(1951-2018) US author who began publishing sf with "The Sky's an Oyster; The Stars are Pearls" for Perry Rhodan #66 in March 1975, and who quickly established himself as a versatile and adaptable novelist, though his practice of working in collaboration tended unfairly to muffle any sense that he had, in his own right, either a distinctive style or concerns which could be thought of as personal. His first novel, The Seeker (1976) with Chris ...
Aiken, John
(1913-1990) US-born UK author, son of Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] and brother of Joan Aiken and Jane Aiken Hodge (1917-2009). John Aiken published his first sf story, "Camouflage", with Astounding in April 1943, in the Probability Zero sequence of short-shorts (see Flash Fiction); though ...
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 ...