SF Encyclopedia Home Page
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.
Site updated on 24 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 ...
Harsh Mistress
US Semiprozine published by DNA Publications, Greenfield, Massachusetts and edited by Warren Lapine with Kevin Rogers and Tim Ballou. Its title was taken from Robert A Heinlein's novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (December 1965-April 1966 If; 1966); this gave the impression to many that it was a bondage magazine rather than sf, which may have affected ...
3rd Rock from the Sun
US tv series (1996-2001). Created by Bonnie and Terry Turner. Producers include the Turners, Bill Martin, Mike Schiff, Marcy Carsey, and Caryn Mandabach. Directors include Terry Hughes, Robert Berlinger, and James Burrows. Writers include the Turners, Martin, Schiff, Christine Zander, and Bob Kushell. Cast includes Jane Curtin (Dr Mary Albright), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Tommy Solomon), Kristen Johnston (Sally Solomon), Wayne Knight (Officer Don Orville), John Lithgow (Dick Solomon) and ...
Gordimer, Nadine
(1923-2014) South African author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. From her long career – she began publishing short fiction in 1937 – one novel is of sf interest, July's People (1981), set in a disarrayed Near Future South Africa; a white family is rescued from danger by its Black servant. Like other Gordimer novels touching on the politics and future of apartheid, the book was banned by ...
de Camp, Catherine Crook
(1907-2000) US author, married to L Sprague de Camp from 1939 until her death, and who served as his manager and accountant from the beginning of their partnership; additionally, over and above their several registered collaborations, she worked with her husband on many works released by publishers as by him alone, a lifetime collaboration he in fact openly acknowledged. The Raymond Z Gallun Award, for "outstanding contributions ...
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 ...