SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 2 December 2024
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 2 December 2024
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Blue Öyster Cult
Also known as BÖC. US rock band formed in Long Island, New York in 1967 as "Soft White Underbelly", largely at the instigation of the record producer Sandy Pearlman (1943-2016), who, whilst he did not play in the band, did write some of their lyrics. BÖC's sound on their debut album, Blue Öyster Cult (1972) is blues-rock of an accomplished but traditional cast, although a left-field style with song lyrics often created a broadly fantastical mood even when the songs ...
Elder, Joseph
(?1933- ) US anthologist who edited The Farthest Reaches: 12 Never-Before-Published Tales of Intergalactic Space (anth 1968) and Eros in Orbit: A Collection of All New Science Fiction Stories about Sex (anth 1973) (see Sex). Contributors to The Farthest Reaches were of generally high calibre, including Brian W Aldiss with "The Worm that Flies", Poul ...
Ely, David
Working name of US journalist and author David Eli Lilienthal (1927- ), who began to publish work of sf interest with "The Last Friday in August" for Fantastic in December 1961, but who is perhaps best known for a politically charged borderline thriller, The Tour (1967), in which tourists visit a fictional South American country to engage in "fake" sex, violence, guerrilla warfare, and reality-show-like rituals. The fabrication ...
Alden, W L
(1837-1908) US lawyer, diplomat, journalist (mostly for the New York Times) and author, in the UK from 1893 (but he died back in the US), a founding member of the Theosophical Society in 1875 (see Theosophy), though he was soon disillusioned and resigned; he began publishing pieces – mostly nonfiction, though there is no comprehensive bibliography – in American magazines in the 1870s, where his advocacy of the canoe for sporting purposes was ...
Bujold, Lois McMaster
(1949- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Barter" for Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, March/April 1985. Almost all her published sf work is part of a loose series of often humorous adventures set in a future of feuding galactic colonies connected by Faster-than-Light "Wormhole jumps". Most of these stories feature members of ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...