SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 17 May 2024
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 15 May 2024
Sponsor of the day: Ansible Editions
Corman, Roger
(1926-2024) US film-maker, a number of whose films are sf. Born in Los Angeles, he graduated in engineering from Stanford University in 1947, and spent a period in the US Navy and a term at Oxford University before going to Hollywood, where he began to write screenplays; his first sale was Highway Dragnet (1954), a picture he coproduced. He soon formed his own company and launched his spectacularly low-budget career. From 1956 he was regularly associated with ...
Moffitt, Donald
(1931-2014) US author who started publishing work of genre interest with "The Devil's Due" for Fantastic in May 1960. His first outright sf novel is The Jupiter Theft (1977), a tale which established him as an author of numerate, physics-oriented, fast-moving Hard-SF adventures (see Jupiter). After some years of silence came the Genesis series – The Genesis Quest (1986) ...
Molyneux, William
(1656-1698) Irish politician, scientist, soldier, philosopher, author of several speculative works; as a text that evokes Proto SF topoi, Dioptrica Nova: A Treatise of Dioptrics: in Two Parts [for full title see Checklist] (1692) is of sf interest for its inclusion of a kind of Fantastic Voyage to the Moon and other planets, though it is made solely at remote control, via telescope. ...
Searles, Baird
(1934-1993) US bookshop proprietor and author who co-edited the 1975 critical journal The Science Fiction Review (Monthly) and published several nonfiction works on sf and fantasy, beginning with Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1975 chap) for Cliffs Notes and continuing with The Science Fiction Quizbook (1976) with Martin Last (1929-2006), composed at a time when ...
Westerman, John F C
(1901-1991) UK soldier and author, son of Percy F Westerman, less prolific than his father but similar, an active contributor to boy's magazines (see Boys' Papers). Of moderate Children's SF interest is the John Wentley sequence, comprising John Wentley Takes Charge (1938), John Wentley Investigates (1939) and John Wentley Wins Through (1940), ...
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 ...