SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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 ...
Drexciya
US dance-music band founded by James Stinson (1969-2002). Drexciya's music is precise, intricate and often beautifully spare, unusually in a sub-genre generally characterized by over-frantic emphasis and rapid tempos. The band's releases were all supported by a distinctive "Black Atlantic" science-fictional narrative – critic Kodwo Eshun [see links below] calls it "electronic music's most ambitious sonic fiction since Parliament's 1975-79 Mothership ...
Weybright, Victor
(1903-1978) American publisher who co-founded New American Library in 1948 and served for many years as chairman, retiring in 1966. In 1967 he and his stepson, Truman Talley (1925-2013) – who had long served as an editor at NAL – founded Weybright and Talley, which during its brief period of activity published a number of sf novels. [GF]
Kanbayashi Chōhei
Writing name of Japanese author Kiyoshi Takayanagi (1953- ), occasionally romanized as Chōhei Kambayashi, whose tone swings largely between Cyberpunk of conflicts with machines, and Satire involving cats. He has won the prestigious Seiun Award on multiple occasions, for works in both modes. / Ever since his competition-winning debut short "Kitsune ...
Sword and Sorcery
This term – describing a subgenre of Fantasy embracing adventures with swordplay and Magic – was coined by Fritz Leiber in a letter published in the fanzine Ancalagon #2 (April 1961) edited by George Heap; but the kind of story it refers to is much older than that. (Other terms that overlap with "sword-and-sorcery" are Heroic Fantasy and ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...