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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
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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 ...
Quandry
US Fanzine (1950-1953), 30 issues, edited from Georgia by Lee Hoffman. Though undistinguished in appearance, Quandry was noted for the quality and humour of its writing; along with Hyphen, its influence on fan publishing is still remembered. Contributors included Walt Willis, Robert Silverberg, Wilson ...
Fiske, Amos K
(1842-1921) US lawyer, journalist and author of Beyond the Bourn: Reports of a Traveller Returned from the "Undiscovered Country", Submitted to the World by Amos K Fiske (1891) which, from within a fantasy frame evoking the Afterlife (see the Encyclopedia of Fantasy), describes in detail a Utopia on another planet, where sexual abstinence has helped create a benevolent Christian world [JC]
Richards, Milton
Pseudonym of Canadian-born author Milo Milton Oblinger (1890-1963), in the US from early years, having taken out US citizenship in 1922; in active service during World War One. He is known for his tales for boys, including the Dick Kent series of nonfantastic adventures in the North woods; of sf interest is The Valdmere Mystery; Or, the Atomic Ray (1929), in which the Invention of a deadly ...
Science Fiction Foundation
UK research unit set up in 1971 at the North East London Polytechnic (which became the University of East London in 1992), but semi-autonomous, being controlled by a council, partly academics and partly sf professionals, and including George Hay, whose enthusiasm had much to do with the SFF's inception. Peter Nicholls, the first administrator (1971-1977), was followed by Malcolm Edwards ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...