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Thursday 24 April 2025
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.
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Broderick, Damien
(1944-2025) Australian author, editor and critic; he had a PhD in the semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of Samuel R Delany. He edited four anthologies of Australian sf: The Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1977), Strange Attractors (anth 1985), Matilda at the Speed of Light (anth 1988) and Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction (anth ...
Wager, Walter
(1924-2004) US crime and spy-thriller author who also wrote as John Tiger and (his first and second names) Walter Herman. His borderline-sf political suspense thriller Viper Three (1971), in which escaped prisoners take over a US nuclear missile silo and blackmail the government with threats of a launch that will trigger World War Three, was adapted for Cinema with a somewhat different slant and ending as ...
Milner, Andrew
(1950- ) British-born academic, in Australia for many years, sociologist of literature and cultural theorist; educated as an undergraduate and postgraduate at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he studied sociology; his PhD thesis was published as John Milton and the English Revolution: A Study in the Sociology of Literature (1981). He taught in Sociology at the London School of Economics and at Goldsmiths College, London, in Cultural Studies at the ...
Seymour, John
(1914-2004) UK farmer and author almost all of whose works, from the early 1950s until his death, are nonfiction discussing the disappearance of what he deemed to be a balanced world (see Ecology), and the prospects of achieving sustainability in the future (see Futures Studies). Of sf interest is Die Lerchen singen so schön ["The Larks They Sang Melodious"] (1982), portraying ...
Kaul, Fedor
(circa 1901-1960) German-born film critic and author, active in 1920s Germany, in UK from 1932. His sf novel, Die Welt ohne Gedächtnis (untraced but ?1933; trans Winifred Ray as Contagion to this World 1933), begins conventionally enough with a deformed Scientist, thwarted in love, determining to revenge himself on the world by releasing dangerous bacteria he has developed; this ...
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 ...