SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 12 March 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 March 2026
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Hensley, Joe L
(1926-2007) US Indiana Judicial Circuit Court judge 1975-1988 and author, most active as an author of suspense novels, one of which, The Poison Summer (1974), was named in the New York Times Best of the Year List in 1974. A member of First Fandom and a lifelong sf fan, he began publishing sf with "Eyes of the Double Moon" in Planet Stories for May 1953, and appeared with some frequency in the field, ...
Vermes, Timur
(1967- ) German journalist, ghostwriter and author who is of sf interest for his first two novels. In the Alternate-History Er is wieder da (2012; trans Jamie Bulloch as Look Who's Back 2014), Adolf Hitler, at the brink of defeat, is conveyed via Timeslip to the Berlin of 2011, where he becomes a talk-show television celebrity. His obscenities about ...
Caldecott, Moyra
Pseudonym of South-African born author Olivia Brown (1927-2015), in the UK from 1951, almost all her work being fantasy for Young Adult readers [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], beginning with Weapons of the Wolfhound (1976); she was best-known for the Tall Stones sequence beginning with The Tall Stones (1977; vt Guardians of the Tall Stones ...
World Fantasy Award
The World Fantasy Awards have been presented in various categories since 1975, for work first appearing in the previous year. Presentations take place at the annual World Fantasy Convention. Although the award is naturally biased towards Fantasy and horror, a number of sf or near-sf novels have been honoured, and most of the winning authors have entries in this encyclopedia. We therefore list the winners for best novel of the ...
Bretnor, Reginald
(1911-1992) US author and anthologist, born Alfred Reginald Kahn – he changed his name legally to Bretnor after World War Two – in Vladivostok, Siberia, but resident in the US from 1920; active after World War Two in a number of genres as an author of both fiction and nonfiction. His interest in military theory, which first generated articles and Decisive Warfare (1969), later inspired the Future at War series of anthologies: ...
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 ...