SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 25 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 ...
Barnes, Myra Edwards
(1933- ) US author of Linguistics and Language in Science Fiction-Fantasy (1975), a reprint of her 1971 PhD dissertation. This is a useful introduction to the subject (see Linguistics), although not as comprehensive as Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction (1980) by Walter E Meyers. [PN]
Redgrove, Peter
(1932-2003) UK poet and author, married to Penelope Shuttle. His first work of sf interest was "Mr Waterman" for Paris Review #29 in 1963, although he contributed occasionally to New Worlds, including a fantasy poem later published as The God-Trap (1966 chap). His first novel, In the Country of the Skin (1973), is a metaphysical fantasy; he remains of sf interest mainly for his later novels, ...
Wharton, William
Pseudonym of US teacher, painter and author Albert William du Aime (1925-2008), mostly in Paris from about 1960. Though his real name was known for many years, it was not revealed publicly until late in life, so that his pseudonymous writing career could be conducted separately from his career as a painter. Best known for Fabulations with a Magic-Realist colouring, like Birdy (1979), whose protagonist's longing to ...
Sheldon, Sidney
(1917-2007) US screenwriter and author, creator of the fantasy Television series I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970) [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] and the made-for-television film Shadow on the Land (1968; vt United States: It Can't Happen Here), which is based on It Can't Happen Here (1935) by Sinclair ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...