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Sunday 8 February 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 6 February 2026
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Fantasy Tales
UK Digest-size magazine, mostly published twice yearly. 24 issues from Summer 1977 to [Winter] 1991, initially published and edited by Stephen Jones and David A Sutton. Fantasy Tales began as a Semiprozine leaning towards dark fantasy and horror, with some Sword and Sorcery, much in the manner or Weird Tales (which early issues deliberately chose to emulate ...
Fraser, Joseph
(? -? ) Australian phrenologist and author of Melbourne and Mars – My Mysterious Life on Two Planets. Extracts from the Diary of a Melbourne Merchant (1889), a Utopia set on Mars. [JC]
McIver, G
(1859-1945) Scottish-born author, whose name was registered at birth as MacIver, in Australia from 1861; his Neuroomia: A New Continent: A Manuscript Delivered from the Deep (1894) routinely uncovers a clement Lost World in the Antarctic inhabited by a long-lived high-tech folk who inform us that Mars is inhabited and spins off her excess population by dumping them on a visiting planet. [JC]
Davis, Gerry
(1930-1991) UK author, primarily for television, who collaborated with Kit Pedler in the creation of the menacing Cybermen for the Doctor Who storyline The Tenth Planet; these inimical Cyborgs became one of the series' most popular recurring foes. Davis was involved with fifteen Doctor Who episodes between 1966 and 1975, all of them concerning the Cybermen. Though his five Doctor Who ...
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 ...