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 ...
Shapeshifters
The ability to change shape is an ancient trope of Fantasy, extensively discussed in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It is a traditional power of various Supernatural Creatures such as Werewolves (invariably) and traditional Vampires; this entry focuses on sf rationalizations of the theme. A defining quality of ...
Daniel, Charles S
(1851-? ) US author whose sf novel, Ai: A Social Vision (1892), which is set in 1950, describes some futile attempts to construct a Utopia; the protagonist, perhaps in despair, makes it clear that only a heavy dose of Eugenics can clear a path for the new world. [JC]
Airship Boys
In the sf of the late nineteenth century the sky is full of Balloons. Airships – a term which in this encyclopedia embraces all powered lighter-than-air vehicles – serve as forms of advanced Transportation in the Fantastic Voyages of Jules Verne and others, and in visions of progress articulated by authors like Albert ...
Cave Carson
A DC Comics Superhero, created by France Herron and Bruno Premiani in 1960; he made several appearances in The Brave and the Bold and Showcase, but was never popular enough to star in his own title, unlike other imitations of the Challengers of the Unknown such as the Sea Devils and the team headed by ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...