SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 19 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 17 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 ...
Martyn, Wyndham
Pseudonym of UK author William Henry Martin Hosken (1874-1963), in the US from 20 July 1904, having travelled as Wyndham Martyn, just before he began publishing fiction in American magazines, sometimes also as W H G Wyndham Martin, Croydon Heath, or William Grenvil. He seems to have written (and may have lived as) Wyndham Martyn from an early date; and although the record of his death gives Grenvil W Martyn, there is no evidence he ever legally changed his birth name. He was the first cousin of ...
Borodin, George
Pseudonym of Russian-born plastic surgeon and author George Milkomane (1903-1996), who lived in the UK from 1932 and took out British citizenship in 1938; one of his pseudonyms, George Alexis Bankoff, was for some time thought to be his real name, but he himself asserted the contrary. Other pseudonyms – he wrote about 120 books in all – include George Braddon, Peter Conway, Alec Redwood and – best known – George Sava, under which name he wrote The Healing Knife ...
Fuqua, Robert
Main working name used by US illustrator Joseph Wirt Tillotson (1905-1959); others included R Fuqua, Fuqua, Joe Tillotson, Joe W Tillotson, Joe Wirt Tillotson, Joseph W Tillotson and his full name, Joseph Wirt Tillotson. He received his formal art education at the Art Institute of Chicago, then went into advertising in that city; to supplement his income he took on freelance Illustration commissions, signing these "Robert Fuqua" – his maternal ...
Hunter, Mel
Working name of American artist Milford Joseph Hunter III (1927-2004). After growing up with an abusive father, Hunter attended Northwestern University in Illinois before moving to California, where he worked as an artist for Northrop Aircraft Corporation. But he began seeking employment as a freelance artist, and in early 1953 he sold his first cover to Galaxy magazine, depicting some men preparing a spaceship for flight, unusually observed from above. As early ...
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 ...