SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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 ...
Proto SF
Meaningful use of the term "proto science fiction" obviously depends on one's Definition of the term "science fiction", just as the use of the term "taproot texts" [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] depends on a moderately stable definition of the term "fantasy"; indeed, the quest for sf's literary ancestry and "origins" is as much a dimension of the problem of definition as a ...
Carlock, Michaela
(? - ) US author whose sf novel, Planet Dreams (1998) depicts two contrasting futures, a polluted, violent Dystopia and a pastoral Utopia connected solely when the protagonists engage in lucid dreaming. Both worlds are depicted with some realism, though an element of wish fulfilment is necessary to believe in the second. [JC]
Aiken, Joan
(1924-2004) UK author, daughter of Conrad Aiken, stepdaughter of Martin Armstrong [for both men see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], and sister of John Aiken; best known as a highly prolific author of fantasy for children and Young Adult readers. Almost none of her many adult novels contain explicit fantasy content, though some have supernatural ...
Smith, Ernest U
(? -? ) US author whose Prehistoric SF tale, Rachel: A Story of the Great Deluge [for subtitle see checklist below] (1904), describes the Biblical Flood in scientific terms, and traces the course of human history through the wanderings of the survivors of the deluge. [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. 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 ...