SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 19 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 17 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 ...
Sperry, Ralph A
(1944-2007) US author of Status Quotient: The Carrier (1981), a Last Man tale set in a colony planet, the protagonists being the only human to survive after his fellows kill first the native inhabitants, and then themselves. [JC]
Biggers, W Watts
(1927-2013) US composer, scriptwriter who wrote Underdog (1964-1973), an animated television series featuring the eponymous rhyming dog Superhero (recited by Wally Cox), and author whose The Man Inside (1968) describes – perhaps not coincidentally – the experiences of a man embedded within a Robot, who must communicate through this disguise. [JC]
Salter, George
(1897-1967) German theatrical designer, teacher, calligrapher and illustrator, born Georg Salter, in active service during World War One; in US from November 1934, after being stripped of his livelihood by the German state for being Jewish; in September 1940, on becoming an American citizen, he changed his name to George Salter. His career is marked throughout by his close association, as designer and illustrator, with particular ...
Thomas, Rhys
(? - ) Welsh author whose sf novel, On the Third Day (2010), is set in the aftermath of a Disaster, the rapid spread of a virus-based Pandemic that causes either incurable depression or savage violence, ending in death after three days. The story follows the immune survivors of a devastated family group to the south coast of England, where their attempts to establish a protective ...
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. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...