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 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 ...
Sidney, A
(? -? ) UK author of Destination Unknown (1928), a Lost Race tale set in Africa. [JC]
Crilley, Paul
(1975- ) Scottish author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Echo of Silence" in New Voices in Science Fiction (anth 2003) edited by Mike Resnick, and who has since focused on Young Adult series. The Invisible Order sequence, comprising The Invisible Order, Book One: Rise of the Darklings (2010) and The Invisible Order: The Fire King (2011) ...
Cole, Adrian
(1949- ) UK author, most of whose books lace fantasy and horror venues with sf devices, but which in the final analysis read essentially as fantasies. He began publishing work of genre interest with "Wired Tales" for Dark Horizons #6 in Summer 1973, and several stories soon followed about a not entirely unusual Cursed Warrior named The Voidal, culminating perhaps in The Coming of the Voidal (1977 chap), and all revised, with some new content, ...
Kureishi, Hanif
(1954- ) UK film director, playwright, screenwriter and author whose career began with a theatrical play, Soaking Up the Heat (performed London, 1976), but who came to general notice with a Television play, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985 BBC; 1986). One of his novels is of sf interest: the protagonist of The Body (2004) arranges to have his brain transplanted (see ...
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 ...