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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.
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 ...
Anderson, William C
(1920-2003) USAF pilot who served in World War Two, and author in various genres who published his first sf, The Valley of the Gods (1957) as by Andy Anderson. Like his Pandemonium on the Potomac (1966), it features a father and daughter: in the former book they philosophize about the extinction of mankind; in the latter they act on their anxiety about Man's imminent self-destruction, becoming involved in what turns out to be a British plot to enforce world peace by ...
Birkmaier, Elizabeth G
(1847-1912) US author, known only for her sf novel about Atlantis, Poseidon's Paradise: The Romance of Atlantis (1892); the Island, whose rulers are corrupt, sinks after an earthquake, though two abducted royal European children escape to what will become Greece, which they begin to civilize, aided by Atlantean lore. [JC]
Hemming, Norma K
(1928-1960) UK-born sf fan and author, in Australia from 1949; she began publishing work of genre interest, usually as N K Hemming, with "Loser Take All" (Winter 1950/1951 Science Fantasy #3) and "Death Ray for Roma" (October 1951 Thrills Incorporated #16), releasing about twenty further stories before her early death, including "Amazons of the Asteroids" (November 1951 ...
Rogers, Jane
(1952- ) UK screenwriter and author of Young Adult novels beginning with Separate Tracks (1983), none of her early work being fantastic, though Island (1999), a mundane fantasia on William Shakespeare's The Tempest (performed circa 1610-1611), comes close. Mr Wroe's Virgins (1991) – she also scripted the ...
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 ...