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Sunday 14 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.
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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 ...
Swamp Thing, The
Created by writer Len Wein and artist Berni Wrightson in DC Comics's House of Secrets #92 (July 1971), the Swamp Thing is a Monster whose moss- and muck-encrusted body is formed entirely of vegetable matter. In that original short graphic story, as a result of a scientific "accident" arranged by his jealous assistant Damian Ridge, Dr Alex Olsen is killed and subsequently resurrected in mutated form ...
Hoffmann, Franz
(1814-1882) German editor, translator and author, much of his copious output being designed for children and Young Adult readers. Most of this work is non-fantastic, though the first novella assembled in Der kleine Robinson; Der Blinde Knabe ["The Little Robinson"/"The Blind Boy"] (coll 1850), which plagiarizes Johann David Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson (1812-1813), ...
Martin, Philip
(1938-2020) UK screenwriter and author, best known for his creation of the crime series, Gangsters (1975-1978). He also wrote some scripts in the Doctor Who universe, as well as some Ties, beginning with Doctor Who – Vengeance on Varos (1988); Doctor Who – Mission to Magnus (1990) was based on his own unfilmed script from 1985. His collection of essays and ...
Barren, Charles
(1913-1999) UK teacher and author, best known for historical romances; co-author with R Cox Abel of Trivana I (1966), in which an overpopulated Earth uses the titular Spaceship (powered by an Ion Drive) to establish a Venus colony (see Colonization of Other Worlds). Barren also scripted a sf drama, "The Planet of ...
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 ...