SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 15 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 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Science and Sorcery
Item of Terminology introduced in this encyclopedia for the genre-blending juxtaposition of sf and Fantasy settings, often presented as Parallel Worlds between which crossings may be made, and distinguished therefore from Equipoisal tales where any "crossings" tend to be integrated into the address of the tale, rather than working as transitions. (This use of crossings ...
Massa, Mike
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "See of Darkness" in the Baen Books anthology Baen Books: Free Stories 2018 (anth 2018 ebook). His first full-length novel was The Valley of Shadows (2018) with John Ringo, set in the latter's Black Tide Rising Zombie/ ...
Evolution
There is, inevitably, an intimate connection between the development of evolutionary philosophy and the history of sf. In a culture without an evolutionary philosophy most of the kinds of fiction we categorize as sf could not develop. Like the idea of progress, evolutionary philosophy flourished in late eighteenth-century France, and it was first significantly represented in literature by Restif de la Bretonne's evolutionary fantasy ...
One Million B.C.
Film (1940; vt Man and His Mate). Hal Roach/United Artists. Directed by Hal Roach and Hal Roach Jr. Written by Mickell Novak, George Baker, Joseph Frickert, based on a story by Eugene Roche. Cast includes Lon Chaney Jr, Carole Landis and Victor Mature. 85 minutes, cut to 80 minutes. Black and white. / In this not very distinguished Prehistoric SF Romeo-and-Juliet soap opera a young caveman is exiled from the family cave and meets a girl from ...
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 ...