SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 18 February 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 17 February 2025
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Moore, Chris
(1947-2025) Prolific UK artist, known to the public primarily for his hard-edged treatment of Hard SF subjects, although in fact he produced covers in different styles for all sorts of other genres as well, including illustrations of record sleeves for artists as diverse as Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac, Status Quo and Pentangle. What impressed most about Moore's sf art was not just the photographic realism but the sense of scale, achieved largely through a ...
van Dongen
Working name of American artist Henry Richard van Dongen (1920-2010), at times also credited as H R van Dongen. He received extensive artistic training at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Woodbury Ross School of Painting before going to work as an artist, initially specializing in advertising and retouching photographs. He entered the sf field with the cover of the September 1950 issue of Super Science Stories, but he quickly became a ...
Cotton, Donald
(1928-1999) UK scriptwriter, who wrote an episode for Adam Adamant Lives! (1966-1967), but had more (though still limited) success with two scripts for Doctor Who, "The Myth Makers" (shown 1965), which he novelized as Doctor Who: The Myth Makers (1985), and "The Gunfighters" (shown 1966), which he novelized as Doctor Who: The Gunfighters (1985), both assembled as ...
Gat, Dmitri V
(1936- ) US university librarian and author of a complex interstellar Dystopia, The Shepherd is my Lord (1971), in which a giant corporation, Galactic Enterprises, oppresses humans and Aliens alike over a vast compass; its attempts to claim-jump a hidden sector of space hiding an advanced race (the Shepherds) end, however, in failure. [JC]
Walshe, Jennifer
(1974- ) Irish composer, vocalist and artist, much acclaimed for often unclassifiable installations and musical theatre works, marked by an irreverent and witty investigation of her chosen texts and sources. Several of her pieces verge on the uncanny, such as XXX Live Nude Girls (2003), in which Barbie dolls act out teenage girls' darkest fantasies. Her ongoing Mars series begins with Mars I (2022) "for two singers, ensemble, live ...
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 ...