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
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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 ...
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is the thesis that social evolution and social history are governed by the same principles that govern the Evolution of species in Nature, so that conflict between and within cultures constitutes a struggle for existence which is the motor of progress. Such ideas are inherent in the socio-economic theories of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who actually coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest", borrowed by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Darwin ...
Hilton, James
(1900-1954) UK screenwriter and author, called up near the end of World War One but never in active service; in the USA from 1935, known mainly for slightly sentimental mainstream novels like Good-bye Mr Chips (1934). He is primarily of sf interest for his Scientific Romance Lost Horizon (1934), a romantic Lost-World tale which is also very well known, though ...
Doohan, James
(1920-2005) Canadian actor, best known for playing Scotty, the irascible but lovable Scottish Flight Engineer for the Starship Enterprise in various Star Trek Television series and films; another sf series role was Commander Carnarvin in the first season of Jason of Star Command (1978-1980). He is listed as co-author with S M ...
Borodin, George
Pseudonym of Russian-born plastic surgeon and author George Milkomane (1903-1996), who lived in the UK from 1932 and took out British citizenship in 1938; one of his pseudonyms, George Alexis Bankoff, was for some time thought to be his real name, but he himself asserted the contrary. Other pseudonyms – he wrote about 120 books in all – include George Braddon, Peter Conway, Alec Redwood and – best known – George Sava, under which name he wrote The Healing Knife ...
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 ...