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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 ...
Blanchard, Charles Elton
(1868-1945) US doctor and author whose The Nut Cracker and Other Human Ape Fables (coll 1911) contains at least one Apes as Human tale, and one involving a Lost Race; A New Day Dawns: A Brief History of the Altruistic Era (1930-2162 A. D.), A. E. 200 (1932) is a Utopia in which the humane suasion of science increasingly benefits humanity. Blanchard's ...
Hershman, Morris
(1926- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Happy Traitor" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for June 1953; a handful of further SF Magazine stories followed.. His sf novel, Shareworld (1972; vt The Crash of 2086 1976), takes a Dystopian view of the stock market dominating the entire world and anticipates a ...
Greatest American Hero, The
US tv series (1981-1983). Created by Stephen J Cannell. Stephen J Cannell Productions. ABC Television network. Produced by Alex Beaton, Babs Greyhosky, and others. Directors included Chuck Bowman, Bruce Kessler, Arnold Laven and Christian I Niby II. Scriptwriters included Rudolph Borchert, Cannell, Patrick Hasburgh and Frank Lupo. Cast includes Robert Culp, Jesse D Goins, Faye Grant, William Katt, Michael Paré and Connie Sellecca. 43 50-minute episodes. Colour. / The name ...
von Braun, Wernher
(1912-1977) German-born engineer and rocket scientist who notoriously led the Peenemünde team that developed Rocket technology for Nazi Germany before and during World War Two, leading to the V-2 or Vergeltungswaffe 2 ["Vengeance Weapon 2"] rocket-powered missile used against London and other Allied targets 1944-1945. As a Colonel in the Nazi SS, he has been accused of ...
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 ...