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Saturday 15 August 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 10 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Weston, George
(1880-1965) UK author whose family emigrated to the USA in 1888/1890; active in the magazines from the publication of "Alicia and Bob the Canary" (October 1904 Everybody's Magazine) or earlier until 1945. He is best known for His First Million Women (1934; vt Comet "Z" 1934), an early version of the sf topos where sterility (see Disaster) affects all but one man – an Adam and Eve-associated ...
Kent, Ryland
Pseudonym of unidentified US author (? - ) whose After This (1939) segues, without undue sharpness of attack, from a realistically depicted World War Two Disaster, during which a merchant ship is blown up, into Posthumous Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. [JC]
Rostand, Maurice
(1891-1968) French playwright and author of marginal sf interest for Le Cercueil de Cristal (1920; trans Alys Eyre Macklin as The Crystal Coffin 1922), whose protagonist is seemingly possessed (see Decadence; Identity Transfer) by a Svengali-like mentor. [JC]
Smith, Keith
(1917-2011) Australian radio and television broadcast and author, most famous as for his "Pied Piper" interviews with children; his sf novel, OGF: Being the Private Papers of George Cockburn, Bus Conductor, a Resident of Hurstfield, a Suburb of Sydney, Australia (1965), is a mild-mannered rather spoofish Satire set in the very Near Future of an erratically urbanizing Australia. [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 ...