SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 7 June 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 2 June 2026
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Barker, M A R
Working name of Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker, born Phillip Barker (1929-2012), US academic specializing in linguistics, game designer and author. His best-known genre creation is the enormously detailed Science Fantasy world of Tékumel (which see), the setting of his early Role Playing Game Empire of the Petal Throne (1975); further related ...
Mobile Police Patlabor
Japanese Original Video Animation (OVA) (1988-1989; vt Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days). Original title Kidō Keisatsu Patoreibā. Studio Deen. Created by Headgear. Directed by Mamoru Oshii. Written by Kazunori Ito. Voice cast includes Toshio Furukawa, You Inoue, Ryunosuke Ohbayashi and Mina Tominaga. Seven 29-minute episodes. Colour. / Patlabor is set in 1998, when, in the wake of societal ...
Fisher, Philip M, Jr
(1891-1973) US teacher, naval officer, author and financial auditor (in that order), whose work was restricted primarily to the Pulp magazines. His earliest sale was an article in Youth's Companion in 1916; his first fiction sale, and also his first work of sf, was "The Demise of Professor Manried" for All-Story Weekly, 18 August 1917. Here the eponymous professor is able to use electricity to amplify and harness thought ...
Alverson, Charles
(1935-2020) US screenwriter, editor and author, in UK from 1969, and Serbia from around 1998; he sometimes wrote as Chuck Alverson. He was associated with Terry Gilliam on various projects, including co-writing the script for Jabberwocky (1977) [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] and drafting an early version of the script for Brazil ...
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 ...