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.
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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 ...
Donnelly, Desmond
(1920-1974) Indian-born politician, journalist and author, in the UK from 1928, Labour MP from 1950 until he resigned the Whip in 1968, having becoming increasingly right-wing in his views (he opposed the welfare state and advocated flogging). In his Near Future sf novel, The Nearing Storm (1968), the military is forced to take over Britain. Donnelly committed Suicide at Heathrow. [JC]
Brown, J G
(1901-1990) New Zealand teacher and editor whose work in the latter capacity has not been restricted to sf. His Anthology, From Frankenstein to Andromeda (anth 1966), is a conscientious scouring of sf materials through a century and a half, including both short stories and excerpts from several novels ranging from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818; rev ...
Night Caller, The
Film (1965; vt Blood Beast from Outer Space). Armitage Films. Directed by John Gilling. Written by Jim O'Connolly, from The Night Callers (1960) by Frank R Crisp. Cast includes Alfred Burke, Maurice Denham, Patricia Haines and John Saxon. 84 minutes. Black and white. / Very-low-budget UK film, made with some genuine style by Gilling, who had previously made good horror films for Hammer. However, the story – an ...
Brambles, Lindsay Francis
(1959- ) Canadian author whose Alternate History tale, the Young Adult Becoming Darkness (2015), takes off from a Hitler Wins perspective: the Pandemic virus he has been responsible for releasing decimates the human race, leaving a few hundred million Vampires to continue ...
Robinson, Roger
(1943- ) UK computer programmer, bibliographer and publisher, active in UK Fandom for many years. The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1983 chap; rev 1984 chap) is an exhaustive Bibliography of one of the most prolific sf writers, Kenneth Bulmer, and Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms (1987) is similarly exhaustive in its ...