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 ...
Fear, W H
(1921-1989) Author, presumed to be British, who is known only for five early contributions to the numbered sequence of sf novels published by John Spencer and Co under the Badger Books imprint. The last of these, The Quest of the Seeker (1958), appeared under the House Name James Elton. [DRL/SH]
Ingpen, Robert
(1936- ) Australian artist, illustrator and author, active from the late 1950s; most of his work is nonfiction or fantasy, the latter usually for children; he has also illustrated a very wide range of titles. He is of sf interest for the Australian Gnomes sequence beginning with Australian Gnomes (1979), which won a 1980 Ditmar Award for best novel, though its narrative elements are presented in the form of a ...
Kellermann, Bernhard
(1879-1951) German author whose Near Future sf novel, Der Tunnel (1913; trans anon as The Tunnel 1915), describes the construction of a transatlantic tunnel (see Under the Sea) over a twenty-six year span; the future anticipated by Kellermann has no World War One. It was the basis of at least two German films, Der Tunnel (1915) directed by William Wauer ...
Bailey, Hilary
(1936-2017) UK editor and author, married to Michael Moorcock 1962-1978, who during the earlier part of her career wrote about 15 sf and fantasy stories, including "The Fall of Frenchy Steiner" (July/August 1964 New Worlds), a Hitler Wins tale whose Jonbar Point is the German decision – based on Steiner's prescience – not to invade Russia in 1941, ...
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 ...