SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 6 November 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 2 November 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Barker, Arthur W
(? -? ) US author of The Light from Sealonia (1927), a Lost World novel set in a deep valley near the North Pole; two opposing civilizations inhabit the cleft, both boasting high Technology, Utopian Sealonia containing fair-skinned abstemious descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Nodolia containing dark-skinned hedonists descended from Cain and his ilk ...
Return of Sherlock Holmes, The
Made-for-tv film (1987). CBS Entertainment Productions for CBS-TV. Produced by Nick Gillott. Directed by Kevin Connor. Written by Bob Shayne. Based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle. Cast includes Margaret Colin, Barry Morse and Michael Pennington. 100 minutes. Colour. / Modern-day private detective Jane Watson (Colin) must sell the UK estate that belonged to her ancestor Dr Watson. On her final visit, a lawyer gives her an old letter ...
Shaw, Frank H
(1878-1960) UK naval officer and author who was in active service during World War One; he also published stories as by Frank Cleveland, Archibald Guthrie, Grenville Hammerton, Frank Hubert, Ernest Winchfield (and perhaps other names as well), appearing very widely in Boys' Papers from early in the twentieth century, with an estimated 7,000 stories to his credit and seventy or more books. Serials not reissued in book form ...
Turner, E S
(1909-2006) UK journalist and nonfiction author who for more than fifty years contributed articles – most of them quirkily factual – to Punch magazine. His first book Boys Will Be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton, et al (1948; exp rev 1957; exp rev 1975) is a useful survey of Boys' Papers. Later editions briefly covered the 1950s UK horror- ...
Champetier, Joël
(1957-2015) French-Canadian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Le Chemin des Fleurs" ["The Way of the Flowers"] in Solaris for October 1981, and who published several sf and fantasy novels of interest in French from 1990. La Taupe et le Dragon (1990; rev 1999; trans Jean-Louis Trudel as The Dragon's Eye 1999) is set on a colony world founded and run by Chinese from a Hong Kong-like enclave; the complex plot ...
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 ...