SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 19 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 17 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 ...
Browne, Howard
(1908-1999) US author and editor who worked 1942-1947 for Ziff-Davis where, among other responsibilities, he was managing editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, then under Raymond A Palmer's editorship. He contributed stories to the magazines, two serials about the Tarzan-like prehistoric adventurer Tharn being ...
Phillips, Alexander M
(1907-1991) US author and long-time sf fan, based in Philadelphia, who wrote a small body of science fiction, fantasy and nonfiction. He was a technical writer and draughtsman as well as an amateur naturalist and photographer. His first professionally published story was "The Death of the Moon" (February 1929 Amazing), in which advanced Aliens from the Moon attempt to conquer Earth in the ...
Modesitt, L E, Jr
(1943- ) US industrial economist and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Great American Economy" in Analog for May 1973, the first of two Council of Economic Advisors tales. Most of his work, both fantasy and sf, has been in the form of series, such as the Timedivers sequence – beginning with his first novel, The Fires of Paratime (1982; vt The Timegod 1992), plus ...
Griffin, Peni R
(1961- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Tower of Voices" for Pandora (Summer 1988 #20), but who has since concentrated almost exclusively of Timeslip fantasies for the Young Adult market (not listed below); her first novel, however, Otto from Otherwhere (1990), competently depicts the interaction between human adolescents and an ...
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 ...