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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 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 ...
King, Maggie Shen
(? - ) Taiwan-born author, in USA from the age of sixteen, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Ball and Chain" in Asimov's for February 2014. This story is essentially the first chapter of her first novel, An Excess Male (2017), set in a Near Future Dystopian China, whose genuine historical One-Child attempts to control ...
Erickson, Paul
(1920-1991) Welsh scriptwriter, active from the 1950s, and author of a Doctor Who Tie, Doctor Who: The Ark (1986), based on his own script – also co-credited on broadcast to his then wife, Lesley Scott – for the 1966 television version of the tale, which involves complex relationships among various Alien races on a vast spaceship. [JC]
Hyphen
Northern Irish Fanzine (1952-1965) edited from Belfast by Walt Willis, with Chuck Harris and later Ian McAuley. 36 issues duplicated on UK quarto paper, May 1952 to February 1965, plus a single-issue revival in 1987 [see below]. / Hyphen is probably the most famous of humorous fanzines. Although production standards (especially for early issues) were less than impressive, the quality and ...
Walters, John Cuming
(1863-1933) UK editor, journalist and author, some of his copious nonfiction being devoted to the life and work of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). Some of the spoofs in Sneape's Spirit and Other Fantasies and Stories (coll 1901) are of mild sf interest; The Great Victorian Imposture (1905 chap) is a Satire on Ignatius Donnelly. [JC]
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 ...