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 ...
Monty Python's Flying Circus
UK tv series (1969-1974). A BBC production. Produced by Ian MacNaughton. Created, starring and written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Other regular actors included Connie Booth, Carol Cleveland, Neil Innes (final series) and Ian MacNaughton. Four series comprising 45 episodes of 25-30 minutes. Colour. / The anarchic/surreal ...
O'Shea, Patti
Pseudonym of US author Patti J Olszowka (? - ), much of whose romantic fiction is nonfantastic, though her most substantial series, the Light Warriors sequence beginning with In the Midnight Hour (2007), is Paranormal Romance [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. She is of sf interest in particular for the Jarved Nine sequence beginning with ...
Toomorrow
Film (1970). Sweet Music/Lowndes Productions/United Artists. Written and directed by Val Guest. Cast includes Karl Chambers, Vic Cooper, Roy Dotrice, Olivia Newton-John and Benny Thomas. 95 minutes. Colour. / This is an unsuccessful attempt by producer Harry Saltzman, best known for the James Bond films, to mix pop Music with sf. An embarrassingly made-to-order pop group is kidnapped by Aliens from outer space (who have ...
Allan, Mabel Esther
(1915-1998) UK author, mostly of tales for children and romances, active from the early 1930s, who also wrote as by Jean Estorel, Priscilla Hagen, Kathleen M Pearcey and Anne Pilgrim; her work for children shows the influence of the author and educational philosopher A S Neill. She is of sf interest for Time to Go Back (1972), whose protagonist uses a form of Time Travel to experience her family's ordeal in ...
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 ...