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Friday 1 July 2022
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 27 June 2022
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Peril, Bruce
(? - ) Author – probably UK, possibly a pseudonym – of the Children's SF novel Rocket to the Moon: A Story for Boys (1946). The plot concerns Scientists who invent a Rocket fuel that will enable a flight to the Moon. They are threatened by an international gang that has learnt of their success and demands to be sent the formula; the scientists defy them and, with the help of a young journalist, the gang is eventually caught and the rocket ...
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
A professional guild created in 1965 as Science Fiction Writers of America, to inform sf writers on matters of professional interest, to promote their professional welfare, and to help them deal effectively with publishers, agents, editors and anthologists; in 1992 (see below) it was renamed the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America while retaining the initial SFWA; in March 2022 it was announced that these same initials would henceforth stand for the more global Science Fiction and ...
Airship Boys
In the sf of the late nineteenth century the sky is full of Balloons. Airships – a term which in this encyclopedia embraces all powered lighter-than-air vehicles – serve as forms of advanced Transportation in the Fantastic Voyages of Jules Verne and others, and in visions of progress articulated by authors like Albert Robida; they are also found very frequently in Dime Novel SF, notably in various series like the Frank Reade Library and Luis Senarens's Jack Wright tales. By 1900 in ...
Lyons, Steve
(? - ) UK author, almost exclusively of Ties to various enterprises, primarily the Doctor Who universe, beginning with Doctor Who: New Adventures: Conundrum (1994) and Doctor Who: New Adventures: Head Games (1995), each part of a complicated Alternate History subset of tales known (perhaps unsurprisingly) as the Alternate History Cycle. Lyons continued contributing to several other ascertainably divisible parts of the overall Doctor Who world; he also ...
Afterblight Chronicles, The
A loose Shared World for Young Adult readers, devised by Jonathan Oliver of Rebellion and published by that company's Abaddon imprint. The setting of The Afterblight Chronicles is in Post-Holocaust times following a devastating worldwide Pandemic: cultists and warlords clash in the resulting Ruined Earth scenario. The franchise was launched with Simon Spurrier's The Culled (2006). Other authors who have contributed at novel length are Scott K Andrews, Jasper Bark, Al Ewing ...
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 and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...