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.
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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 ...
Comfort, Alex
(1920-2000) UK medical doctor, poet and author of significant popular work in the fields of sexology and gerontology, being perhaps best known for The Joy of Sex (1972; frequently revised), many of whose interior illustrations were by Chris Foss. Before World War Two he established an extremely precocious reputation for his poetry and fiction, and for the pacifism he espoused rigorously during the years of conflict (later, in 1961, in connection ...
Fies, Brian
(? - ) US cartoonist and author whose Graphic Novel, Whatever Happened to The World of Tomorrow? (graph 2009), dramatizes the American dream of a Technology-led drive towards a Utopian future centred on a continuous move into space. The narrative traces from 1939 on a recognizable sf advocacy of early ...
Connelly, J H
(1840-1903) US author, associated with works in the occult, though he wrote at least one Western. The first of the two tales assembled as Neila Sen and My Casual Death (coll 1890) is sf, featuring an Invention which projects sounds via light; The Crystal's Secret (1892) is an sf story again involving an aspect of light: images of a murder are trapped in an ice crystal. [JC]
Joscelyne, Cyril
(1891-1934) UK author, in active service during World War One. His sf novel, When Gubbins Ruled (1925 chap), treats the revolutionary Near Future election as premier of the UK of a member of the working class as properly subject to a Satirical approach. [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 ...