SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 20 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 ...
Science Fantasy News
UK Fanzine (1949-1960) edited by A Vincent Clarke and "sub-editor" Kenneth Bulmer. Fifteen issues from #1 (January 1949, dated Winter 1948) to #16 (June 1960) – there was no #6 – plus four interim issues titled SFN Minor (all 1949) and separately numbered, and some other addenda. The format varied from half-foolscap (#1-#4) to UK quarto (#5, #13-#16) to full foolscap (#9-#12); all ...
Dyalhis, Nictzin
(1873-1942) US chemist whose debut story was the nonfantastic "Who Keep the Desert Law" (20 October 1922 Adventure); he began to publish work of Pulp sf interest with "When the Green Star Waned" (April 1925 Weird Tales), an early and not particularly well-written Space Opera in which the humanoid inhabitants of Venhez (Venus) discover that Aerth or ...
Elder, Michael
(1931-2004) London-born actor and author in various genres, in Scotland from about 1940, where he featured in at least 1000 radio broadcasts, though he was best known for his television role as the doctor in Take the High Road (1980-2003), a long-running soap opera. The first of his novels, The Affair at Invergarroch (1950), hints at the supernatural as an ancient cathedral is ransacked for treasure; he began writing sf proper with Paradise is Not Enough ...
A Merritt's Fantasy Magazine
US Pulp magazine, 5 issues, December 1949 to October 1950, published by Popular Publications under their imprint Recreational Reading, Inc. No editor was credited, but it is believed to have been Harry Widmer, though Mary Gnaedinger may well have also been involved. A Merritt's Fantasy Magazine was a companion magazine to Famous Fantastic Mysteries and ...
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 ...