SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 9 July 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2025
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Knight, Damon
(1922-2002) US author and editor; his third marriage was to Kate Wilhelm. Like many sf writers, Knight became involved in sf Fandom at an early age, and by 1941 was a member of the Futurians in New York, where he shared an apartment with Robert A W Lowndes and met James Blish, C M Kornbluth, ...
Ellis, D E
(1926-2001) UK author briefly active in the early 1960s with "Stress" in New Worlds for September 1961 and the routine A Thousand Ages (1961; vt Space Voyage 1973). [JC]
Subterranean
US semi-professional magazine which began in print form and gradually migrated to an Online Magazine with a brief overlapping of two separate magazines. The print version was letter size, on quality paper, published and edited by William K. Schafer as an adjunct to Subterranean Press in Burton, Michigan, which had specialized in quality books, mostly horror and the supernatural, and the first issue of the magazine, published in May 2005, also focused on ...
Conapt
In sf Terminology, an apartment in a high-rise building. Conapts often feature what is effectively a complete life-support system, so that even when they are in a densely populated city their inhabitants are often seen to be isolated from other people. A conapt is often assumed to be in a city consisting of high-rise buildings, each one highly populated, but with the buildings themselves not necessarily crowded together, and sometimes separated by parkland. ...
Winter, Mrs Elizabeth C
(1841-1922) Scottish-born poet and author, in USA most of her life, who also wrote as by Isabella Castelar; of some sf interest is The Spanish Treasure (24 September 1892-?? The New York Ledger as by Isabella Castelar; 1893) [see Checklist for further details], a Lost Race tale et in South America, with abductions and romance in the foreground. Winter is credited with the first use in this novel of the phrase "to turn the air blue". [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 ...