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 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 ...
Williams, T Owen
(? - ) UK author of whom nothing is known beyond his contribution to the Robert Hale Limited sf list of A Month for Mankind (1970) – a novel in which UFOs prove to be crewed by Aliens from planet Boran who plan to take over the Earth via the usual Invasion. [JC/DRL]
Thomson, A A M
(1894-1968) UK author, who in later life became well-known as a cricket columnist, writing as A A Thomson; he was in active service during World War One. Thomson is of some interest for his first book, The World of Billiam Wissold (1927), a Parody of the club-bore style of H G Wells's The World of William Clissold: A Novel at a New Angle (1926 3vols), which incorporates a ...
Pick, J B
(1921-2015) UK scholar, poet and author, for many years a specialist in the work of David Lindsay, editing several of his works; The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (anth 1970; vt The Haunted Man 1979) with Colin Wilson and E H Visiak conveys a strongly sympathetic view of the author. Pick's own fiction includes A Land Fit for 'Eros (1957) with John ...
Hull, E Mayne
(1905-1975) Canadian author, in the US from about 1944, married from 1939 until her death to A E van Vogt, who collaborated with her on most of her work, either in its original magazine form or by expanding it for book publication; she was born Edna May Hull, becoming Edna May Vogt on marriage and legally changing this to Edna Mayne van Vogt in the process of her and her husband's application for US citizenship in 1945. She began publishing sf with "The Flight ...
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 ...