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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 ...
Matter Penetration
The ability to walk through walls or be otherwise transported through solid matter is a wish-fulfilment fantasy less prevalent than Invisibility, perhaps owing to its greater scientific implausibility. The first sf example is perhaps "The Ray of Displacement" (October 1903 The Metropolitan Magazine) by Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose titular Ray diffuses an individual's atoms and ...
Kidd, Virginia
(1921-2003) US literary agent, editor and author, married to James Blish 1947-1963, who began to publish professionally in the early 1950s, publishing at least one story, "On the Wall of the Lodge" (June 1962 Galaxy) as Virginia Blish with James Blish; her first solo sf story, "Kangaroo Court", did not appear until much later, in Orbit 1 (anth 1966) edited by Damon Knight. Among other ...
Astounding She-Monster, The
Film (1957; vt Mysterious Invader UK). Hollywood International Pictures, American International Pictures. Produced and directed by Ronald V Ashcroft (credited as Ronnie Ashcroft). Written by Frank Hall and Ashcroft (uncredited) from their original story. Cast includes Robert Clarke, Kenne Duncan, Marilyn Harvey, Shirley Kilpatrick and Jeanne Tatum. 62 minutes. Black and white. / Geologist Dick Cutler (Clarke) is in the ...
Decima Vittima, La
Film (1965; vt The Tenth Victim). Champion/Concordia. Directed by Elio Petri. Written by Petri, Ennio Flaiano, Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvione, based on "Seventh Victim" (April 1953 Galaxy) by Robert Sheckley. Cast includes Ursula Andress, Elsa Martinelli, Marcello Mastroianni and Massimo Serato. 92 minutes. Colour. / This French-Italian coproduction is based loosely on Sheckley's story about a future world where, ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...