SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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Adams, Eustace L
(1891-1963) US editor and author who was in the American Ambulance Service and the U S Naval Service during World War One. In the 1930s he was a prolific contributor of aviation-linked tales to journals like Argosy. Most of his titles are tales for boys, the best-known of these being the Andy Lane series of Airplane Boys adventures, beginning with Fifteen Days in the Air ...
Medicine
Medical applications of Technology comprise one of the few areas where the cutting edge of scientific research impinges directly and intimately upon ordinary human life. New medicines are so rapidly brought into everyday use that it is easy to forget how rapid progress has been, and that barely 100 years separates us from the crucial Conceptual Breakthroughs associated with the development of organic chemistry and the ...
Easton, Thomas A
(1944- ) US critic, author and biology teacher (he holds a PhD in theoretical biology) who is best known for the Reference Library book-review column he wrote for Analog from 1979 to 2008, where he covered a wide range of titles with strict fairness, though he was not often granted the room to delve deep; a selection of 250 individual reviews from the 1980s and 1990s was assembled as Periodic Stars (coll 1997). His first ...
Quiroule, Pierre
Pseudonym of UK author Walter William Sayer (1892-1982), and also a House Name of the Sexton Blake Library, to which Sayer contributed under that name; it was also used by R Coutts Armour. As Quiroule, Sayer is also credited with The Painted Death (1935), a Lost Race tale featuring Amazons deep in the South American jungle ruled by a queen ...
Calder, Richard
(1956- ) UK author – in Thailand 1990-1996 and later in the Philippines until returning to London in the first years of this century – who began publishing sf with "Toxine" in Interzone: The 4th Anthology (anth 1989) edited by John Clute, Simon Ounsley and David Pringle; his early short fiction, almost always densely post-Cyberpunk in idiom and ...
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 ...