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Friday 6 December 2024
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.
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Wood, Wally
Working name of American artist Wallace A Wood (1927-1981), sometimes credited as Wallace Wood or simply Wood. After military service, the largely self-trained Wood received some instruction at New York's Cartoonists and Illustrators School in 1948 and did some minor work for newspaper Comic strips before shifting to comic books; one of his early collaborators was the young Harry Harrison, a fellow illustrator who later became the ...
Mason, David
Working name of US author Samuel Mason (1924-1974) who began publishing with "Placebo" in Infinity Science Fiction for November 1955; he was married 1956-1962 to Katherine MacLean. Most of his novels – such as his first, Kavin's World (1969), and its sequel in the Kavin sequence, The Return of Kavin (1972) – were routine ...
Darrow, Paul
(1941-2019) UK actor and author whose Avon: A Terrible Aspect (1989), a Tie to the Blake's 7 world, deals with the early life of the character Avon, whom he played in 51 of the 52 episodes of the original Television series. The Novel of Queen: The Eye (1997) novelizes an interactive Game created by the rock group Queen. / A ...
Belden, Wilanne Schneider
(1925- ) US author, mostly of Young Adult titles, whose Mind sequence – comprising Mind-Call (1981), Mind-Hold (1987) and Mind-Find (1988) – places a moderately dysfunctional family with Psi Powers in a Post-Holocaust environment, for they live in California after a vast earthquake has essentially destroyed the ...
Feghoots
Item of sf Terminology denoting a brief, joky fictional anecdote or vignette which builds towards, and whose entire impact depends on, some more or less ludicrous punchline in the form of a pun or spoonerism; occasionally the effect is of deliberate anticlimax, as in the shaggy-dog story (see Flash Fiction; Humour). The name derives from Reginald Bretnor's sequence ...
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 ...