SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 23 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 ...
Baker, Henry
(1698-1774) Naturalist and early microscopist, one of the founders of the Society of Arts in 1754; the father-in-law of Daniel Defoe. He was the author of an epic poem, The Universe (1727), the subtitle of which proclaims its intended aim "to restrain the pride of Man". This is something Baker attempts by striving repeatedly for what we might call a Sense of Wonder ("Amazing Thought! What Mortal can conceive!") ...
Dakron, Ron
Pseudonym of US poet and author Ronald J Christoffel (1953- ). His novel Hammers (1997) describes in a somewhat gonzo literary style the transformation of five characters into hammerhead sharks (see Biology). The novella Mantids (2008) is a darkly humorous updating of Petronius's Satyricon. [JC/SH]
Capobianco, Michael
(1950- ) US author, married until her death to A C Crispin, whose most significant work has been in collaboration with William Barton (whom see for details). His solo novel, Burster (1990), examines the stresses afflicting those aboard a Generation Starship which has left an Earth that was possibly at the brink of destruction. Capobianco was ...
Ford, John M
(1957-2006) US author, author of some children's fiction under an unrevealed pseudonym, and of some work as by Milo Dennison (a House Name despite the use of Ford's own middle name) and as by Michael J Dodge. He was involved in Fandom from an early age, beginning to publish sf under his own name with "This, Too, We Reconcile" in Analog for May 1976. His Alternities Corporation sequence appeared in ...
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 ...