SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 9 June 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 8 June 2026
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Filmfax
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema magazine. Printed on newsprint-quality paper until #127 and on glossy paper thereafter. Publisher and editor: Michael Stein. 166 issues, 1986-2024. / One of the best sf and Horror Media Magazines of the later twentieth century, Filmfax has enjoyed a long run due in large part to high-quality content. Coverage has included vintage sf films such as ...
Greenlee, Sam
(1930-2014) US author in whose Near-Future sf novel, The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969), a Black man becomes second-in-command in the CIA, where he is the agency's eponymous token spook (a word which here does double duty as racial slur and slang for intelligence agent). He quits to organize Black uprisings in the Cities all across a diseased, racist America, making use of everything he has learned from his years as an ...
Monty Python's Flying Circus
UK tv series (1969-1974). A BBC production. Produced by Ian MacNaughton. Created, starring and written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Other regular actors included Connie Booth, Carol Cleveland, Neil Innes (final series) and Ian MacNaughton. Four series comprising 45 episodes of 25-30 minutes. Colour. / The anarchic/surreal ...
Wray, John
Pseudonym of US musician and author John Henderson (1971- ) whose first novels are nonfantastic history-obsessed confabulations of the Western experience, conspiracy-laced assertions of the meaningfulness of the past two centuries, in the manner brought to maturity by Thomas Pynchon. The Right Hand of Sleep (2001) is set in 1938 Austria; Canaan's Tongue (2006), based partly on the real-life John Murrell ...
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 ...