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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 ...
Williams, Ralph
(1914-1959) Working name of Ralph William Slone, US author of almost a dozen stories published in Astounding and other SF Magazines from 1940 to 1959. "Business as Usual, During Alterations" (July 1958 Astounding) deals optimistically with the Economics of free commodities made available by Matter Duplication, suggesting that this ...
Settle, Elkanah
(1648-1724) UK poet, journalist and playwright, active from 1666; fully and controversially involved, first as a Whig and then a Tory, in the tempestuous political life of his time. Of sf interest is The World in the Moon: An Opera [for subtitle see Checklist below] (performed 1697; 1697), an elaborate comedy taking much of its story from Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638), set partly on Earth and partly on the ...
Vampire Bat, The
Film (1933). Majestic Pictures Inc. Produced by Phil Goldstone and Larry Darmour. Directed by Frank R Strayer. Written by Edward T Lowe. Cast includes Lionel Atwill, Melvyn Douglas, Maude Eburne, Robert Frazer, Dwight Frye and Fay Wray. 63 minutes. Black and white. / In the village of Kleinschloss somewhere in central Europe, there is a rash of mysterious deaths in which the blood is drained from victims' bodies. Two small puncture marks are found on each throat, as if made by ...
Johnson, Charles
Almost certainly the joint pseudonym of Gena Metcalf (? - ) and Tom Metcalf (? - ), most of whose work has been nonfiction for Young Adult readers. Of sf interest is Pieces of Eight (1989), whose young protagonists travel by Timeslip to the world of the pirate Blackbeard, where they have adventures; this title was announced as beginning the ...
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 ...