SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 6 October 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 5 October 2026
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Black Scorpion
US tv series. (2001). Chum Television for the Sci Fi Channel. Created by Roger Corman and Craig J Nevius. Directors included Tim Andrew, David Blass, Gwyneth Gibby and Rob Spera. Writers included Steve Gentile, Nick Guthe and Malcolm Stephens. Cast includes BT (Brandon Terrell), Michelle Lintel and Scott Valentine. 22 60-minute episodes. Colour. / Police detective Darcy Walker (Lintel) works in Angel City, a thinly ...
Cohen, L J
(? - ) US author who has concentrated on series, the first being the Changeling's Choice fantasy sequence beginning with The Between (2012). Of sf interest is her second series, the Halcyon Space sequence of Young Adult Space Operas beginning with Derelict (2014); the galaxy here depicted is seen as vast, its pressure- and population-points being ...
Ettinger, Robert C W
(1918-2011) US lecturer in physics, Cryonics advocate and founder in 1976 of the Cryonics Institute, which preserves the dead as safely as possible given the technological and legal constraints in the early twenty-first century, and writer. He began his short career as an sf author with "The Penultimate Trump" in Startling Stories for March 1948, about achieving Immortality; but he is much ...
Neilson, Keith
(1935- ) US academic of importance in the field of sf and fantasy scholarship for editing (anonymously: both books were created under the umbrella editorship of Frank N Magill) the Survey of Science Fiction Literature [for subtitle see Checklist] (anth 1979 5vols) and the Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature (anth 1983 5vols); the first contains 500 and the second about 500 essays, averaging some 2000 words, on ...
Fraser, Ronald
(1888-1974) UK soldier, civil servant and author, in active service during World War One until an injury left him permanently disabled. Most of his work, like his first novel, The Flying Draper (1924; rev 1931), utilizes fantasy or sf devices – in this initial case levitation (see Telekinesis) – to create allegorical or philosophical arguments, unmistakably influenced by H G ...
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 ...