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 20 January 2025
Sponsor of the day: Joe Haldeman
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 ...
Dietz, William C
(1945- ) US author who began to publish sf with War World (1986; vt Galactic Bounty 1997), the first volume of his Sam McCade sequence of sf adventures about an interstellar bounty hunter, which continued with Imperial Bounty (1988) and two further titles. The galactic venue of the series exhibits some interesting kinks, and McCade himself gradually gains individuality. Although the angle of approach differs – the ...
Woodcock, John
(1927-2017) UK painter and illustrator, active from around 1945; the colour-dense blocks and patterns of his work usually unpack into symbolic but moderately telling representation; it may seem surprising – given his continuing activity until near his death – that he did not publish more prolifically. All the same he produced covers for several authors with entries in this encyclopedia, including Jocelyn Brooke, Susan ...
Real Time Tactics
Term used to describe a form of Computer Wargame in which players fight small scale military battles, typically adopting the role of a squad commander. Events occur continuously (in "real time") and moves must be made without prolonged reflection. Sf members of the form include Syndicate (1993) and Mech Commander (1998) (see Battletech). [NT]
R H Esquire
(? -? ) Anonymous English author who produced the first Utopia to appear after the Restoration of Charles II. New Atlantis. Begun by the Lord Verulam, Viscount St Albans: And Continued by R.H. Esquire (1660), is a plausible, if less elegant, conclusion to Francis Bacon's New Atlantis: A Work Unfinished (bound in with Sylva Sylvarum 1626; 1627 chap). Picking ...
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 ...