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Wednesday 12 August 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.
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
MacLeod, Sheila
(1939- ) Scottish author, married 1963-1976 to actor and pop singer Paul Jones (see Privilege), an experience reflected in her first novel, The Moving Accident (1968), which is nonfantastic. Her second, The Snow-White Soliloquies (1970), is a Fabulation with surprisingly firm sf underpinning, describing in technological terms the ...
Glass, Mrs Charles Wilder
(1874-? ) US spirit medium and author, whose claim to have co-authored her three novels with a dead doctor whose spirit had been transported to Mars has not been corroborated; these novels, written in the belief that Percival Lowell had demonstrated the existence of canals on Mars, are Ruth's Marriage in Mars: A Scientific Novel (1912), Romance in Starland: A Scientific Novel (1915) and ...
McDonald, Steven E
(1956- ) UK author, now in the US, who began publishing sf with "Empty Barrels" in Analog for June 1978, his best-known story being "Ideologies" (October 1980 Analog), and whose first novel, The Janus Syndrome (1981), put into Space-Opera guise a tale involving racial oppression, romantic exaggerations of material, and masquerades. He then fell silent, though he has more ...
Matas, Carol
(1949- ) Canadian author, most of her work being directed to Young Adult readers, with a strong interest in the dramatizing of Jewish/Israeli issues. A considerable portion of her work is of sf interest, starting with her first novel, The DNA Dimension (1982), whose young cast is suddenly transmitted into a heavily regimented Dystopian ...
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 ...