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Thursday 23 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 ...
Pearce, Howard D
(1931-2004) US scholar of fantastic literature who also wrote as H D Pearce. He co-edited The Scope of the Fantastic [see Checklist for subtitle] (anth 1985) with Robert A Collins, being the collected papers from the inaugural International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (1980-current); and also co-edited the later volume Forms of the Fantastic [see Checklist for subtitle] (anth 1986) with Jan Hokenson. [DRL]
Ballard, Isaac Fowler
(1826-1897) UK tax officer ("supervisor of excise") and author of The Prophetic Future of the Empire of Great Britain: Dedicated to her Royal and Imperial Majesty the Queen (1871 chap), in which the Battle of Dorking scenario is taken to predict a Future History in which Britain triumphs. [JC]
Barclay James Harvest
UK prog-rock band formed in Oldham in 1966 by guitarist John Lees (1947- ), bassist Les Holroyd (1948- ), keyboard player Stuart "Woolly" Wolstenholme (1947-2010) and percussionist Mel Pritchard (1948-2004). The band's folk-influenced music, informed by a rather egregious agrarian Pastoralism, occasionally reverted to a Dystopian sf. Their song "Negative Earth" (in ...
Pardio
Pseudonym of UK author John Nott Pyke-Nott (1841-1923), author of a book-length poem, The White Africans (1879 chap; exp rev 1883), which narrates the discovery of an ancient Lost Race of whites in the mountains of Africa; it is an early example of the form. [JC]
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 ...