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
Sponsor of the day: Joe Haldeman
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 ...
Groundhog Day
Film (1993). Columbia. Directed and coproduced by Harold Ramis (1944-2014). Written by Danny Rubin and Ramis, based on a story by Rubin. Cast includes Chris Elliott, Marita Geraghty, Andie MacDowell, Bill Murray and Steven Tobolowsky. 101 minutes. Colour. / Phil Connors (Murray) is a cynical and unhappy television weatherman with no real future in store, dejected at having to cover for the fifth time the annual 2 February Groundhog Day ceremony in the small town of Punxsutawney, ...
Venning, Hugh
Pseudonym of Egyptian-born author Claude van Zeller (1905-1984), apparently in the UK from an early age, whose The End: A Projection, Not a Prophecy (1947) envisages, in 2050 CE, a Dystopian (though scientifically advanced) England surrounded by a worse world under the dominion of 666, who rules the Greater Roman Empire and is defeated at the last moment (Venning had become a Benedictine monk in 1934) by the hosts of the Lord. [JC]
Lindsay, David T
(1897-1953) Scottish author, in active service during World War One, most of his eighteen books being adventure tales, usually juveniles (see Children's SF), all published between 1936 and 1940, often involving feats in aircraft. Of sf interest are The Ninth Plague (1936), about a Mad Scientist's attempts to block off the Sun's rays and cause the ...
Bartholomew, Barbara
(1941- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Wheel of Fire" in Analog for June 1975, and whose Timeways Trilogy for young adult readers – The Time Keeper (1985), Child of Tomorrow (1985) and When Dreamers Cease to Dream (1985) – traverses familiar Time-Travel themes without undue stress. Other books for younger readers include ...
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 ...