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Tuesday 13 October 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 12 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Walther, Daniel
(1940-2018) French editor and author who began publishing short stories in 1965, publishing at least 165 tales over the following decades; he proved an eclectic author and easy stylist who could switch from Hard SF to Heroic Fantasy. Mais l'espace ... Mais le temps ["What about Space? What about Time?"] (1972) is a long novella blending space Technology and ...
Collingwood, Harry
Pseudonym of UK civil engineer and author William Joseph Cosens Lancaster (1843-1922), most of whose fiction – he wrote at least 40 books – was for boys and featured nautical settings. He remains best known for his "Flying Fish" sequence of sf tales: The Log of the "Flying Fish": A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure (1887), With Airship and Submarine: A Tale of Adventure (1907) and ...
Mathews, Harry
(1930-2017) US editor, translator, poet and author, mostly in Paris from the 1960s; co-founder of the experimental journal Locus Solus (1961-1962), he was an early advocate of Oulipo, most of his exercises in this discipline being found in his Poetry; The Orchard: A Remembrance of Georges Perec (1988) is a nonfiction homage to his partner in Oulipo, Georges Perec. / Mathews is primarily of sf interest for his ...
Haywood, Eliza
(?1693-1756) UK actress from 1715, publisher, critic, and most prolific female author of her time, publishing over fifty plays and fictions of various sorts (including several novels) between 1719 and her death. Much of her work of Proto SF interest was aggressively "scandalous", containing thinly veiled characterizations of notable contemporaries, and includes Memoirs of a Certain Island, Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia (1725-1726 2vols), ...
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 ...