SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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 ...
Donovan's Brain
Film (1953). Alan Dowling Productions/United Artists. Directed by Felix E Feist. Written by Feist, based on Donovan's Brain (1943) by Curt Siodmak. Cast includes Lew Ayres, Steve Brodie, Gene Evans and Nancy Reagan (then Nancy Davis). 84 minutes. Black and white. / One of three films based on Siodmak's novel of the same name, the others being The Lady and the Monster (1944) and ...
Gray, Curme
(1910-1980) US author in whose complex sf novel Murder in Millennium VI (1951) a homicide case shakes a matriarchal Dystopia thousands of years hence into the near Far Future – murder being inexplicable to the inhabitants of this world. The focus of interest in the novel is the gradual unveiling of the fact that a slow transition – not back to patriarchy but to some synthesis – is under way. There is a ...
Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman
Japanese Original Video Animation (OVA) (1996). Original title Tokumu Sentai Shainzuman. Based on the Manga by Kaimu Tachibana. Production I.G. Directed by Shinya Sadamitsu. Written by Hideki Sonoda. Voice cast includes Yasunori Matsumoto, Ryoko Sakakibara, Nozomu Sasaki, Toshihiko Seki and Hekiru Shiina. Two 30-minute episodes. Colour. / This is an affectionate Parody of ...
Langton, Sarah Anne
(? - ) UK artist and graphic designer, long active as the main designer for the Forbidden Planet specialist store, in which capacity she has worked on branded projects for DC Comics, Marvel Comics, the Star Wars franchise and numerous others. / Langton designed the iconic "Pickwick the dodo" logo for Hodder & Stoughton's genre imprint, ...
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 ...