SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 July 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 7 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Glasgow 2024 (Worldcon)
McCracken, Craig
(1971- ) US director, scriptwriter, producer and animator. After studying at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), McCracken joined Hanna-Barbera Cartoons in 1993. He contributed two The Powerpuff Girls shorts to the What a Cartoon! (1995-1997) anthology series; these were an update of a film, Whoopass Stew! (1992), he had created ...
Shane, Trevor
Working name of US author Trevor Shane Wiessmann (1976- ) who is of sf interest for his Children of Paranoia sequence comprising Children of Paranoia (2011), Children of the Underground (2013) and Children of the Uprising (2013), set in a Near Future world where a millennia-long war between vying Secret Masters is beginning to surface, confirming the endemic ...
Train, Oswald
(1915-1988) UK-born US fan (see Fandom) from 1935, when he became involved in the nascent Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, also attending the first (highly informal) Convention in 1936. A significant Small-Press publisher, he was the main figure behind Prime Press. In 1968 he founded Oswald Train: Publisher, which specialized in detective ...
Canada
The first serious Canadian sf work was James de Mille's posthumously published A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888). In this Utopian satire, set in a Lost World, Western values are inverted (criminals are regarded as diseased, the ill are imprisoned, dying is deemed more desirable than living). Successors of De Mille were Grant Allen and ...
Appleby, Ken
Working name of UK author Kenneth Philip Appleby (1953- ), whose first sf novel, The Voice of Cepheus (1989), presents a clear-voiced, optimistic vision of the consequences of First Contact with an Alien species whose signals have been detected by the young female protagonist and her astronomer boss. [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 ...