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 ...
Suspiria
1. Film (1977). Produzioni Atlas Consorziate presents a Seda Spettacoli production. Directed by Dario Argento. Written by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi, based on excerpts from Suspiria de Profundis ["Sighs from the Depths"] by Thomas De Quincey (Spring-Summer Blackwood's Magazine 1845; coll 1854; rev 1891). Cast includes Dario Argento, Eva Axén, Joan Bennett, Miguel Bosé, Flavio Bucci, Stefania Casini, Jessica Harper, Udo Kier, Barbara ...
Breakwell, James
Pseudonym of unidentified US comedian, blogger and author (1987- ), most of his work being nonfiction, including spoofish "guides" to living like Only Dead on the Inside: A Parent's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (2017) [these titles not listed below]. He is of sf interest for The Chosen Twelve (2022), a Space Opera set mostly on a Starship whose human passengers, en route ...
Van Vorst, Bessie McGinnis
(1873-1928) US social reformer and author, mostly in France from around 1900, who usually wrote as Mrs John Van Vorst, but also as by Esther Kelly; her early nonfiction was mostly written in collaboration with her sister-in-law Marie Louise Van Vorst (1867-1936). She is of some sf interest for Magda Queen of Sheba: From the Ancient Royal Abyssinian Manuscript [for full title see Checklist below] (1907) as Mrs John Van Vorst, a Lost Race tale set in ...
Amplifier
UK rock band from the Manchester area. Their first album, the heavy-duty Amplifier (2004) contains many sf touches, and closes with a long track, "UFO", in which Alien Spaceships and, strangely, U-boats, descend upon the earth. Better is their EP release The Astronaut Dismantles HAL (2006), whose songs, whilst not making explicit the disc's titular allusion to ...
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 ...