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Wednesday 11 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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Colladay, Morrison
Working name for most of his fiction of Charles Morrison Colladay (1877-? ), US publisher, salesman and author who is discussed in E F Bleiler's Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998). "Spirit Trails" (January 1928 Ghost Stories) as Charles Colladay may be his first story. In When the Moon Fell (1929 chap) illustrated by Frank R Paul, the ...
Gemmell, David A
(1948-2006) UK journalist and editor, and then full-time author, primarily of Heroic Fantasy, most famous for his first (and long-lived) Fantasy series, the Drenai Saga, beginning with Legend (1984; vt Against the Horde 1988) and finishing with Hero in the Shadows (2000; vt Hero in the Shadows: Waylander the Slayer Stalks an Ancient Evil 2000), and built around the ...
AI
The common acronym for Artificial Intelligence, an item of Terminology used increasingly often in information science, and hence in sf, since the late 1970s. Most writers would agree that for a Computer or other Machine of some sort to qualify as an AI it must be self-aware. There are as yet none such in the real world. Controversy continues regarding the feasibility of "strong AI", the creation of ...
Harmer, Liz
(? - ) Canadian editor and author, now in US, active from around 2010. In her first novel, The Amateurs (2018), an abandoned Near Future Hamilton, Ontario houses a ragged group of survivors of some Disaster (see Survivalist Fiction), though in this case the catastrophe is entirely human in origin. A vast intrusive ...
Davis, Richard
(1945-2005) UK author, columnist, and editor. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he worked as a story editor on two BBC Television series – Out of the Unknown (1965-1971) and the short-lived Late Night Horror – and was a columnist and film reviewer for Films & Filming. As a short story writer he wrote mostly in the horror genre, starting with "Guy Fawkes Night" in ...
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 ...