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Friday 29 September 2023

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.

Site updated on 25 September 2023
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Key, David

(? - ) US author of an sf novel, The SEX Machine (1968), in which Sex and Android themes are matched together. [JC]

(1891-1969) UK journalist, anthologist and author; his first given name, Llewellyn, was changed to Dominic in 1921, apparently to mark his conversion to Catholicism (there seems to be no record of his having earlier been known as Leg Before Wicket Lewis). In active service for almost the whole of World War One, he became active as a writer only in 1919, when he took over the fledgling By the Way column in the London Daily Express under the ...

Godfrey, Daniel

(? - ) UK author whose New Pompeii sequence, comprising New Pompeii (2016) and Empire of Time (2017), complicatedly but with verve unpacks a Time Travel plot involving the transportation of the inhabitants of Pompeii into a Keep-like duplication of the old City in Near Future central Asia. Echoes of the ...

Jefferson Starship

Also known as Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship: The Next Generation and Starship. US psychedelic rock band, formed, as "Jefferson Airplane" in Los Angeles in 1965 by Marty Balin (1942-2018) and Paul Kantner, amongst others; later joined by Grace Slick (1939- ) whose songwriting skills and distinctive voice contributed a great deal to the commercial success of the band. The folk-rock and LSD-experimentalism of their early albums ...

Hackett, John Winthrop

(1910-1997) Australian soldier, academic and author, whose military career in the British Army extended from 1931 to 1968, when he retired as commander in chief, British Army of the Rhine, and who then became principal of King's College, London. His Future War texts, The Third World War: August 1985: A Future History (1978) and The Third World War: The Untold Story (coll 1982), both written with the help of a think-tank of soldiers, ...

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 ...