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.
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 ...
Olney, Ross R
(1929- ) US author, anthologist and newspaper reporter and columnist who has published over 180 books in his career, mostly nonfiction on various subjects for juvenile audiences, ranging from automobiles to Space Flight. Olney is of some sf interest for a reprint Anthology aimed at teenage readers, Tales of Time and Space (anth 1969). This contains stories by Poul ...
Ableman, Paul
(1927-2006) UK author and playwright who remains best-known for his first, non-fantastic novel, I Hear Voices (1958), though his first work of sf interest – "The Prophet Mackenbee" for Lucifer in 1952, about an sf author who surrounds himself with disciples in an absurd world – came earlier. The Twilight of the Vilp (1969) is not so much sf proper as an informed and sophisticated playing with the conventions of the genre in a ...
Gilford, C B
(1920-2010) US teacher and scriptwriter and author – sometimes under pseudonyms not used for work of genre interest – whose sf novel, The Liquid Man (September 1941 Fantastic Adventures; 1969), features a biologist and a problem in undesired metamorphosis, the nature of which is clear from the title. In The Crooked Shamrock (1969) – which has a Ruritanian flavour though the ...
Maras, Karl
A House Name of the London publishers Comyns/Paladin Press, used twice by Kenneth Bulmer and once by Peter Hawkins. [JC/DRL]
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 ...