SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 8 February 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the 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 6 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: John Howard
Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Jarre, Jean Michel
(1948- ) French composer and performer of electronic synthesizer pieces. There is no explicit sf content to the instrumental suites Oxygene (1976), Equinoxe (1978) and Les Chants Magnétiques (1981) but it is hard to escape the sense that these bleepy, throbbing, soaring soundscapes are aural SF. Jarre is certainly fascinated by space. The last track of Rendez-Vous (1986), "La Derniere Rendez-Vous" is dedicated ...
ALF
US tv series (1986-1990). Warner Bros TV for NBC. Created by Paul Fusco and Ed Weinberger. Produced by Tom Patchett. Writers include Fusco, Patchett. Directors include Fusco, Patchett, Peter Bonerz. 25 minutes per episode. Colour. / ALF, an "alien life form" – in the line of extraterrestrial descent from My Favorite Martian and Mork in Mork & Mindy, though also influenced heavily by ...
Catherall, Arthur
(1906-1980) UK author for Young Adult audiences, active from the 1930s under a variety of names, none of which were used for sf or fantasy; he is best known for his S S Bulldog sequence about a tugboat captain and crew menaced by a Villain with almost (but not quite) supernatural abilities. Catherall's only identified sf novel is The Flying Submarine (?1943), an adventure tale whose villain steals two ...
Mendham, Clement A
(1859-1941) UK civil engineer and author of a Lost Race tale, A Buried Mystery (1898), in which an ancient settlement is discovered in South America; the protagonist lives there a while, soon finding a maiden sufficiently white to marry. [JC]
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 ...