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Saturday 12 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
Sponsor of the day: Ted Chiang
Ross, Raymond J
(? - ) UK author of One Hundred Miles Above Earth (1981), a Near Future space adventure for Robert Hale Limited. [JC]
Shanks, Edward
(1892-1953) UK editor, poet and author in various genres whose Scientific Romance, The People of the Ruins: A Story of the English Revolution and After (16 October 1919-12 February 1920 Land and Water; 1920), seems clearly to reflect the aftermath of World War One (Shanks, who was invalided from front line combat in 1915, was a war poet). The novel applies ...
Matthews, Rodney
(1945- ) British illustrator. After he studied at the West of England College of Art from 1961 to 1962, Matthews initially worked in advertising, while also drumming for the rock group Squidd. In 1970, he left advertising to focus on doing art for album covers, which has remained one of his primary avocations; perhaps his best known effort in this area is his cover for Nazareth's No Mean City (1979), depicting a menacing humanoid monster on a barren ...
Gamboe, Scott
(1969- ) US author whose Avenger sequence, comprising The Killing Frost (2006) and New Dawn Rising (2009), is Military SF set within an interstellar Space Opera venue, where a human coalition, corrupted from within by politicians, comes close to war with an Alien counterpart hegemony; the hero of the tale breaks all the rules in order to gain ...
Zombies
Of the three chief classes of Supernatural Creature most popular in fantastic fiction – the others being Vampires and Werewolves – zombies seem the least supernatural and the most easily rationalized in sf terms, though at its origin the term clearly described an entirely supernatural entity, and was so understood in the late nineteenth century, when it was used by such authors as ...
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 ...