SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 20 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 17 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 ...
Algernon
Norwegian Fanzine; 40 issues published 1974-1998 by the Oslo Students' SF Club, Aniara – the name taken from Harry Martinson's poem Aniara (1956) – whose founding editor was Øystein Sørensen. Published 3-4 times a year until 1979; more irregular during the 1980s; guest editors 1989-1991, then edited regularly by Cirstyn Bech-Yagher 1991-1998. / Regarded as the ...
Mudd, Steve
(? - ) US author whose sf novels in the Tangled Webs Space Opera sequence, comprising Tangled Webs (1989) and The Planet Beyond (1990), are adventures set in a totalitarian Galactic Empire. [JC]
Harney, Gilbert Lane
(1851-1925) US church minister and author of Philoland (1900), a Utopia set in a Hollow Earth venue, where a Lost Race of ancient Hebrews has established a populous civilization. It is a relatively sophisticated benign vision of a highly technologized Underground society; such visions are exceedingly rare after ...
Imaginary Voyages
A term much used in the Terminology of sf/fantasy critics, probably derived from the French, whose name for the genre is "voyages imaginaires". From this term was also derived Voyages extraordinaires, the overall series title used by publisher Jules Hetzel on the novels of Jules Verne. In this encyclopedia the theme is treated under ...
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 ...