SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 13 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
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Monsters vs. Aliens
Film (2009). Paramount Pictures presents a DreamWorks Animation production. Directed by Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon. Written by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger, Maya Forbes, Rob Letterman and Wallace Wolodarsky, inspired by the Abel Laxamana and Jim Stenstrum's Warren Publishing Comic Rex Havoc: Asskickers of the Fantastic (June 1978-February 1983 in 1984; vt Rex Havoc: Raiders of the Fantastic, ...
Alternate Cosmos
A Term used in this encyclopedia for the special case of Parallel World universes where the laws of Physics are and always have been importantly different; some sf stories posit this kind of radical change (or the threat of such change) to our own universe. George Gamow uses the device of dreams in Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (stories 1938-1939 Discovery; ...
New Moon Quarterly
UK low-paying Amateur Magazine published by Weller Publications, Orpington, Kent and edited by George P Townsend, ostensibly as a fantasy and more experimental companion to Dream Magazine. It saw five, octavo-size issues between June 1987 and Summer 1988. The magazine ran a sizable quota of science fiction amongst its more overt fantasy and occasional light-hearted vignettes. "Blind is the Hand That Fears No Life" (June ...
Wilson, Angus
(1913-1991) UK author who published some early supernatural horror, like "Totentanz" (May 1949 Horizon), assembled with other tales including "Raspberry Jam" in The Wrong Set (coll 1949), but who remains best known for satirical non-fantastic anatomies of modern middle-class England like Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) and The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (1958). His one sf tale, The Old Men at the Zoo (1961), applies techniques typical of ...
Mackintosh, Sophie
(1988- ) UK poet and author whose first novel, The Water Cure (2018), is set in a Near Future world whose three teenage female protagonists are raised in restrictive ritual-choked Keep on what they believe to be an isolated Island (see Prisons); in the belief that men have become dangerously allergic to women, their mother subjects them to ...
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 ...