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 ...
Brissett, Jennifer Marie
(1969- ) London-born software engineer and author, in USA from the age of four, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Executioner" in Warrior Wisewoman 2 (anth 2009) edited by Roby James. The apparent over-complicatedness of her first novel, Elysium (2014), dissolves in the unpacking of the intricate but lucid story, which is initially set in an unnamed (but identifiable) version of New York, where a ...
Reiffel, Leonard
(1927-2017) US physicist, broadcaster, noted for his competent and accessible radio programme The World Tomorrow which began in 1964, Deputy Director of the Apollo Moon project for NASA 1965-1969, and author; in his Near Future Technothriller, The Contaminant (1978), a plot is brewed to destroy the USSR with a virus that causes cancer (see Pandemic). [JC]
Reed, Robert
(1956- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Mudpuppies" as by Robert Touzalin for L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future (anth 1986) edited by Algis Budrys; the story gained the $5000 grand prize awarded in the Writers of the Future Contest for that year. Reed has since gradually become prolific and highly admired as an author of short fiction, assembling some of ...
Hader, Berta
(1890-1976) US illustrator and author, born in Mexico of American parents in transit, whose copious work, in collaboration with her husband, includes one Young Adult sf tale, The Skyrocket (1946) with Elmer Hader, though it may be the case that the Rocket in question is fuelled by Magic. [JC]
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 ...