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Sunday 7 December 2025
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 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Rays
One of sf's trademark Clichés is the use of rays – of any colour or none at all, inhabiting the known electromagnetic spectrum or imaginary new spectra, or entirely based on Pseudoscience – for all manner of showy and/or narratively convenient effects. Exotic rays give ambiguous aid in Medicine or spawn Mutants, but above all they provide glamorous ...
Loomis, Noel
(1905-1969) US author and editor, active in the magazine field for some time, publishing work under his own name and as Benjamin Miller, and a book as by Silas Water. Though his first novel, Murder Goes to Press (1937), was a thriller, he was most successful as an author of Westerns. In his first sf novel, City of Glass (July 1942 Startling; exp 1955), based on his first sf story, three men are ...
Alper, Gerald A
(? - ) Writer of whom nothing is known beyond his authorship of the Time-Travel novel My Name Is Vladimir Sloifoiski (1970), a routine exploration of Identity issues. [JC]
Trow, William Clark
(1894-1982) US educational psychologist whose primary focus on the use of Psychology to address the nature of forma learning is reflected in Gulliver's Visit to Walden III: A Report on the Values in Education (1976), which couched as Gulliver's visit to a later version of the Utopia promulgated in B F Skinner's Walden Two (1948). [JC]
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 ...