SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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
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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 ...
Delap, Richard
(1942-1987) US editor, reviewer and author who entered the sf world as a fan and soon began to publish book reviews, beginning with pieces in the Fanzine Granfalloon and contributing to "The Future in Books" column in Amazing Stories during 1959-1960. In Delap's F & SF Review he created a valuable review organ, whose folding was regretted. As a reviewer he was highly visible, being ...
Port Iris
US low-paying downloadable Online Magazine produced by Casey Seda, Pendleton, South Carolina; quarterly from March 2010 to June 2011; 5 issues. Though close to being a Fanzine because a sizable portion of each of the first three issues covered local sf and fantasy Conventions, these were redeemed by including Interviews with the various Guests of Honour, including ...
Transcendence [film]
American film (2014). Alcon Entertainment/DMG Entertainment/Straight Up Films. Directed by Wally Pfister. Written by Jack Paglen. Cast includes Paul Bethany, Clifton Collins Jr, Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall, Cory Hardrict, Cole Hauser, Falk Hentschel, Kate Mara and Cillian Murphy. 119 minutes. Colour. / Brilliant Computer Scientist Will Caster (Depp), one of several researchers intent upon developing an ...
Raven, Simon
(1927-2001) UK author best known for his Alms for Oblivion sequence, which bracingly deprecates almost all aspects of twentieth century British civilian and military life; the third volume of the sequence, The Sabre Squadron (1966), slides close to sf. None of his work is of strong sf interest, though Brother Cain (1959) is about a Faustian bargain that verges on the supernatural, and Doctors Wear Scarlet (1960) hints at a rational cause for the ...
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 ...