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Monday 27 June 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.
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Yexley, Lionel
(1861-1933) UK naval officer, journalist, editor, politician and author born James Wood, taking the name Yexley by deed poll in 1918; active from about 1890, at first anonymously, then as Yexley. He remains best known for his campaigns to improve conditions among seamen, which proved successful from around 1911 after he persuaded Admiral Sir John Fisher (1841-1920) and Winston Churchill that reforms would improve the efficiency of the service. His Future War tales reflect these views. When the ...
England, Barry
(1932-2009) UK playwright and author whose first novel, Figures in a Landscape (1968), is a chase thriller set in a surreal unnamed South American country; it was filmed as Figures in a Landscape (1970) directed by Joseph Losey. His second novel, No Man's Land (1997), is a Post-Holocaust military thriller focused on a brigade of soldiers in a burnt-out environment who rescue some innocents and kill many who are not, and who are opposed by an enigmatic figure in an isolated Keep. [JC]
Cardinal, Jane
Pseudonym of UK author Ethel Williamson (? -? ), who also wrote as by Cherry Veheyne; the Living Idol beginning with The Living Idol: A Romantic Melodrama (1933) treats the Clichés of the Lost Race novel in terms of the Sheik Romance: a starlet, while being held hostage by a prince of ancient lineage who boasts Superpowers, learns love at his hands (veiled). In the sequel, The Taming of the Despot (1934), love and wisdom triumph against an Invasion ...
Buck, Charles H
Pseudonym of US authors Ray Buck (? - ) and Hugh C Culik (1950- ) for the Near Future medical thriller, The Master Cure (1989), in which white supremacists develop a virus intended to act only against "undesirables", which in this context means non-whites (see Race in SF). [JC]
Dimension X
Radio series (1950-1951). NBC-Radio network. Regular staff writers included Ernest Kinroy (1924-2014), George Lefferts, and Howard Rodman. Narrator: Norman Rose. 50 30-minute episodes. / This was one of the earliest adult sf Radio drama anthology series, and was of reasonably high quality; most instalments were based on published sf stories, although Kinroy and Lefferts contributed several original plays. Dimension X was partnered with Astounding and for the most part adapted stories from ...
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 ...