SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 21 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 20 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 ...
Wilson, Steven H
(? - ) US information technology consultant, publisher and author whose sf series, the Arbiter Chronicles sequence beginning with Taken Liberty: A Tale from the Arbiter Chronicles (2006) is a modestly gonzo Space Opera strongly evocative of the world of Star Trek and other similar universes. Peace Lord of the Red Planet (2016) is a singleton. [JC]
Wonder Stories Quarterly
US letter-size Pulp magazine, Fall 1929 to Summer 1932, dropped to standard pulp-size Fall 1932 to Winter 1933, 14 issues, published by Hugo Gernsback's Stellar Publishing Corporation as a quarterly companion to Science Wonder Stories/Wonder Stories, the first three issues appearing as Science Wonder Quarterly. David Lasser was the managing editor. Wonder Stories Quarterly ...
Astonishing Stories
US Pulp magazine, 16 issues February 1940 to April 1943, mostly bimonthly, published by Fictioneers, Inc, Chicago; edited February 1940 to September 1941 Frederik Pohl and November 1941 to April 1943 Alden H Norton. / Fictioneers, Inc was a subsidiary of Popular Publications. After the success of this magazine and its sister publication, Super Science Stories, both edited by the ...
Hawthorne, Julian
(1846-1934) US author, journalist and anthologist, the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, of whom he wrote a biography, and father of writer Hildegarde Hawthorne (1871-1952). Julian forever lived in the shadow of his father and never mustered even a fraction of Nathaniel's reputation; indeed he sullied the family name when he became inadvertently involved in a speculation fraud in 1908 which made others rich and put him in gaol for a few months in 1913. In a ...
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 ...