SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 12 July 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 7 July 2026
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Heavy Metal
Glossy letter-size US colour Comic-strip magazine inspired by the French magazine Métal Hurlant and initially reprinting English-language versions of mainly sf and fantasy material from this and other French, Italian and Spanish sources alongside similar matter by select US contributors. Published monthly April 1977-December 1985, quarterly from the Winter (i.e., January) 1986 issue and then bimonthly from March 1989, ...
Barlow, Steve
(? - ) Pseudonym of Steve Lowe, UK author of two Star Wars parodies – Star Bores (1999) and Star Bores: The Prequel (2004 dos) – both with Steve Skidmore. Barlow and Skidmore have collaborated on very many books and scripts for child and Young Adult readers. The Outernet sequence involves Cyberspace derring-do in the galactic ...
Erikson, Andrew
(? - ) UK editor whose two Anthologies, The Classic Science Fiction Collection (anth 2018) and Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Stories (anth 2018), provide a range of tales, mostly from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The latter volume, through an espousal of H G Wells and Robert E Howard as figures of cognate ...
Kavenna, Joanna
(1974- ) UK journalist and author some of whose novels make sophisticated use of the SF Megatext, like her second, The Birth of Love (2010), where an intense narrative analysis and presentation of the nature of childbirth is broken into four sequences, the first three of them nonfantastic. The fourth narrative is set in a Dystopian Near Future, a world devastated ...
Gurdjieff, G
(?1866-1949) Armenian philosopher of Greek descent, composer, mystic, teacher and author, in Russia proper (Armenia being a Russian territory) from 1912, in Turkey and mostly in France from 1920; his birth date is insecure, with 1872 and 1877 also being suggested. His doctrine of the Fourth Way – which seems essentially to apply "scientific" expressions of mystical intuitions with the aim of providing models of harmonious selfhood for his followers – ...
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 ...