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Friday 17 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 ...
Ariel: The Book of Fantasy
Large-letter-size US magazine/anthology (12 x 9 in; about 305 x 230 mm), only the first issue (Autumn 1976) of which is unequivocally designated a magazine, and was made up almost exclusively of original material; the three remaining issues or volumes (1977, April and October 1978) typically presented reprint stories with new illustrations. All four were edited by Thomas Durwood. Ariel was lavishly produced on glossy paper, emphasizing fantastic art and ...
Mayhew, Julie
(? - ) UK actor, playwright and author whose first novel, the Young Adult Red Ink (2013), engages peripherally with supernatural material. Her second novel, The Big Lie (2015), is a Hitler Wins tale set in an Alternate History Britain under German rule around 2014, and conflates its protagonist's coming of age with the gradual ...
Merrill, James
(1926-1995) US author and poet whose two novels are nonfantastic, as is most of his poetry, which is of the highest calibre, and justifies his ranking as one of the most important American poets of his century. He is of indirect but significant sf interest, and may be deemed a central figure of twentieth-century Fantastika, for The Changing Light at Sandover (omni 1982) [see Checklist for details of component parts], a sustained 17,000 line verse ...
Cheap Truth
US Fanzine (1983-1986) published from Austin, Texas; edited and largely written by Bruce Sterling under the pseudonym Vincent Omniaveritas. Eighteen issues photocopied on US quarto paper, mostly 2pp (ie a single sheet); #9 had an additional 2pp and #15 an additional 4pp for letters received while #16 added a 2pp bonus article. All issues undated except #17, The Last Cheap Truth, with a dateline of November 1986. / ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book reviews on BBC Radio from 1974 and ...