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 ...
Koch, Eric
(1919-2018) German-born author and television producer, in UK from 1935, in Canada from 1940, several of whose novels are of some sf interest. In The French Kiss: A Tongue in Cheek Political Fantasy (1969), set in a Near-Future Canada threatened – as usual – by separatism, a Reincarnated colleague of Napoleon muses on de Gaulle's similarity to the long-dead Emperor. ...
Lowry, Lois
(1937- ) US author of Young Adult novels whose strong-hewed intensity is clearly manifest in the Giver series starting with The Giver (1993), Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004), all three tales set in Pocket Universe enclaves in what may be a planetary Ruined Earth venue, though no engendering catastrophe is ...
Re-Animator
Film (1985). Re-Animator Productions/Empire. Directed by Stuart Gordon. Written by Gordon, William J Norris and Dennis Paoli, based on Herbert West – Reanimator (February-July 1922 Home Brew as "Grewsome Tales"; vt March 1942-November 1943 Weird Tales; 1977 chap) by H P Lovecraft. Cast includes Bruce Abbott, Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton and David Gale. ...
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Film (2015). Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures. Written and directed by Joss Whedon. Story by Zac Penn and Whedon, based on the Marvel Comic by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Cast includes Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Clark Gregg, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Thomas Kretschmann, ...
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 ...