SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Gong
Rock band, identified as French although they were founded by Australian Daevid Allen (1938-2015) and have included English and American as well as French members. Allen had been working in London in the late 1960s but, temporarily denied a visa, relocated to Paris and formed Gong with his partner, Gilli Smith (1933- ). The group's first album Magick Brother/Mystic Sister (1970) has a rather fairy, and indeed airy-fairy, vibe, inaugurating in rudimentary ...
Transformers – The Movie, The
Film (1986). Sunbow/Marvel. Directed by Nelson Shin. Voices by Orson Welles, Eric Idle et al. Written by Ron Friedman. Animation by Toei Animation. 86 minutes. Colour. / This US-produced, Japanese-animated film is a spin-off from the comic-book and television series of the same name, and all are part of a gigantic marketing operation to sell the Transformers Toys: model Robots (invented ...
Johns, Clifford Royal
(? -2023) US engineer and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Dog Thinks Ahead" in Shimmer #3 for Spring 2006; his first novel, the Young Adult Walking Shadow (2012), is set in a noirish Near Future Chicago, a world where Memory Edits can be purchased on the instalment plan and users must pay in full (even if they do ...
Métal Hurlant
French Bedsheet-size, glossy colour Comic-strip sf magazine launched January 1975 by Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet (1947- ) and illustrators Jean Giraud and Philippe Druillet; published by Les Humanöids Associées. Conceived as a high-quality showcase for the growing number of French sf artists, Métal Hurlant was an ...
Laumer, March
(1923-2000) US author, brother of Keith Laumer, whose first novel, The Time Machine That Never Got Past First Base: A Laugh-in at the Future? (1968 Hong Kong) as by Felix Severance (the name of a character from his brother's earlier A Plague of Demons), is a spoof Satire on Time Travel stories (see also Baseball); later novels, some as by Xavier Zanthus, ...
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 ...