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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.
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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 ...
Starlight SF
Early UK Online Magazine accessible via the Prestel dial-up viewdata system operated by British Telecom from 1979 to 1994. Edited by David Langford; media editor Barbara Conway; published by Micronet 800. Trial version late 1982; officially published 1983-1985. / Starlight SF, resulting from one of George Hay's initiatives to take sf into new media, was vaguely affiliated to editor ...
Wellen, Edward
(1919-2011) US author born Edward Paul Levy but at an early age given his mother's anglicized surname (Wellen for Wilensky) following her divorce. His output consists almost exclusively of short stories, mostly in the mystery genre. He began to publish work of sf interest with a "non-fact article", "Origins of Galactic Slang" in Galaxy for July 1952, which was followed by a sequence of similar Galactic Origins spoofs over the following ten years. His actual sf ...
Diabolik
Film (1967; vt Danger: Diabolik). Dino De Laurentiis/Marianne. Directed by Mario Bava. Written by Bava, Dino Maiuri, Adriano Baracco, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, based on fumetti by Luciana and Angela Giussani. Cast includes Adolfo Celi, John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli and Terry-Thomas. 105 minutes, cut to 88 minutes. Colour. / This Italian/French coproduction is one of Di Laurentiis's several attempts to film sf Comic strips, ...
Chiller Theatre Magazine
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema Semiprozine printed on middle-grade paper. Published by Chiller Theatre, Incorporated. Editor: possibly Kevin Clement. 25 issues, 1994 to 2010; the publication schedule was erratic. / Like many others, this magazine began as an imitation of Famous Monsters of Filmland, albeit with a more mature slant. In this it succeeded admirably, though never ...
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 ...