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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 24 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 ...
Long, Duncan
(1949-2016) US illustrator, author and editor of a Survivalist newsletter. His first novel, Anti-Grav Unlimited (1988; vt Antigrav Unlimited 3.1 2015), features a super-competent tinker/inventor hero (see Edisonade; Invention) who – in a Post-Holocaust atmosphere almost perfectly designed to serve as an arena for his exploits ...
Maine, Charles Eric
Pseudonym used by UK author David McIlwain (1921-1981) for his sf; two other pseudonyms, Richard Rayner and Robert Wade, were used for detective thrillers. Maine was one of the relatively few but extremely active UK fans before World War Two, and in 1938 published his first story, "The Mirror", in his Fanzine The Satellite, which he edited with Jonathan Burke; he also appeared in the fanzine ...
Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
Film (1980). Lucasfilm/Twentieth Century Fox. Executive producer George Lucas. Directed by Irvin Kershner. Written by Leigh Brackett, Lawrence Kasdan, based on a story by Lucas. Cast includes Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Frank Oz and Billy Dee Williams. 124 minutes, re-released Special Edition 127 minutes (1997). Colour. / A first viewing of this blockbuster sequel to ...
Peddie, James
(? -? ) Scottish author, much of whose output was nonfiction under various names about games. His sf novel is Capture of London (1887 chap), in which the Invasion of London, after the general model of the Battle of Dorking tales, is in this case accomplished via a Channel tunnel. [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 ...