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Thursday 13 November 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.
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Friend, Oscar J
(1897-1963) US literary agent, editor and author who worked for the Standard Magazine chain on Captain Future, Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories during 1941-1944, a period when these magazines were most specifically aimed at adolescents. The editorial director at the time was Leo Margulies, with whom Friend later edited three anthologies (see below). ...
Hazzard, Wilton
An occasional House Name of the Fiction House Magazines, used chiefly for sports-related fiction. One sf story by Margaret St Clair appeared as by Hazzard: "The Dancers" (January 1952 Planet Stories). Other instances of this byline include two reprinted sports stories by Nelson Bond. [MA/SH/DRL]
McDonald, Raymond
Joint pseudonym of Canadian author Raymond Alfred Léger (1884-1934) and Canadian lawyer, politician, inventor and writer Edward Richard McDonald (1871-1952), whose sf novel, The Mad Scientist: A Tale of the Future (1908), features the increasingly dangerous – or effective – interventions of the eponymous Mad Scientist in the dealings of US businessmen and of the US Government itself. The scientist's inclinations are socialist ...
Bidston, Lester
(1883-1938) UK author of stories for the early-twentieth-century Boys' Papers, including contributions to the Dixon Hawke series of detective tales, and of thirteen Sexton Blake thrillers (some published anonymously) between 1927 and 1939; his only sf book proper under his own name was A Leap Through Space (1921), a tale whose young protagonists visit various planets, including an inhabited Mars. ...
Young, Suzanne
(1976- ) US author of the A Need So Beautiful paranormal romance sequence beginning with A Need So Beautiful (2011) and the Young Adult Program sequence beginning with The Program (2013), which is set in a Near Future Dystopian America afflicted by an apparent virus that causes a hugh number of teenagers to commit ...
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 ...