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Wednesday 18 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 16 February 2026
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Arnold, Jack
(1916-1992) US film-maker, born Jack Arnold Waks, who made a number of sf films during the 1950s. In World War Two, while in the Army Signal Corps, which was producing training films, Arnold found himself working with the great documentary maker Robert Flaherty and received an invaluable crash course in film-making. After World War Two he made several successful documentaries. This led to an offer from Universal Studios to direct feature films, beginning with Girls in the Night ...
Adventure [magazine]
US general-fiction Pulp magazine that became a men's magazine from October 1954. It ran for a total of 881 issues from November 1910 to April 1971, and was a standard pulp for most of those years except for a period as a Slick from October 1926 to July 1927, as a Digest from January to May 1951, and as a letter-size semi-slick from June 1953 to October 1970. Its last three issues, December 1970-April 1971, were ...
Logsdon, Syd
(1947- ) US teacher and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "To Go Not Gently" in Galaxy for June 1978 (see also below). His first sf novel, Jandrax (1979), is a Planetary Romance whose inhabitants, two generations after their Starship has been stranded, have created two contrasting societies on the planet: a "stationary" order governed by the ...
Saxton, Josephine
(1935-2023) UK author who began publishing sf with "The Wall" in Science Fantasy #78 for November 1965, and whose first three novels – The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith (1969), Vector for Seven: The Weltanschaung of Mrs Amelia Mortimer and Friends [sic] (1970) and Group Feast (1971) – established her very rapidly as an inventive creator of sf Fabulations. ...
Walker, Hugh
Pseudonym of Austrian author Hubert Straßl (1941- ), whose Magira sequence – featuring a character who first creates a Wargame and then becomes absorbed within it – begins with Reiter der Finsternis (1975; trans Christine Priest as War-Gamers' World 1978), Das Heer der Finsternis (1975; trans Christine Priest as Army of Darkness 1979), Boten der Finsternis ...
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 ...