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Tuesday 21 July 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 20 July 2026
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Byrd, Bob
(? - ) US author of a Tarzan pastiche, Ka-Zar, King of Fang and Claw (October 1936 Ka-Zar as "King of Fang and Claw"; 1937), in which young David Rand, orphaned after a plane crash in Africa, becomes the lord of the jungle, calling himself Ka-Zar. Two sequels followed, "Roar of the Jungle" (January 1937 Ka-Zar) and "The Lost Empire" (June 1937 ...
Mason, Douglas R
(1918-2013) UK junior-school headmaster and prolific author after 1964, both under his own name and as John Rankine (Rankine being his middle name); he was generally silent from about 1980 until his death, though some material was released or re-released in ebook form in 2003. His first story was "Two's Company" as by Rankine in John Carnell's New Writings in SF 1 (1964), and he was soon publishing two to three books a year, focusing under the ...
Woodard, George C
(1924-2001) US editor and author whose New Day, Big World, Few People: A Novel of the Past and Future (1969) describes a Near Future world in which Overpopulation crises have been solved. [JC]
Jay, Victor
Pseudonym of Victor J Banis (1937-2019), who is perhaps best known for transgressive 1960s novels like The Affairs of Gloria (1964), which was unsuccessfully prosecuted for obscenity by officials in Sioux City, Iowa, and for The Man from C.A.M.P. sequence of gay detective novels. Early pseudonyms include Jay Vickery, under which he wrote one sf novel, Man Into Boy (1968), and the House Name J X ...
Fane, Julian
(1927-2009) UK author of literary bent whose Dystopia, Revolution Island (1979), was one of the last UK visions of a union-dominated left-wing future. It was published just before the incoming administration of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) put an end, for the century of its publication, to the local relevance of this category of the dreadful warning. [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 ...