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Thursday 21 May 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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Altebrando, Tara
(? - ) US author of Young Adult titles, who also writes as by Tara McCarthy, most of her work, beginning with The Pursuit of Happiness (2006), being nonfantastic romances. Leaving (2016) contains hints of Horror in SF. The Possible (2017), in which Telekinesis threatens to further rupture an already seriously ...
John W Campbell Award
Award for the best new sf or fantasy author, selected by votes of sf fans and invariably presented at the Worldcon as part of the Hugo ceremony. There is a two-year eligibility period: an author first published in 2000 would be eligible for the 2001 or 2002 award but not thereafter. Sponsored by Condé-Nast, publishers of Analog, the John W Campbell Award was instituted in 1972 in tribute to John W ...
Coyle, Harold W
(1952- ) US author who has specialized in Technothrillers hovering at the edge of the Near Future; they include Team Yankee: A Novel of World War III (1987) which – as a Sequel by Another Hand to Sir John Hackett's Third World War novels of the early 1980s – is of interest for 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 ...
Platonov, Andrey
Working name of Russian author Andrew Platonovich Klimentov (1899-1951), best known for his mainstream fiction, in particular his portrayals of ordinary humans caught in the gears of totalizing (but savagely ineffective) Technology. One of the most talented figures active in the first decades after the 1917 Revolution, he was regarded with suspicion by "official" literary critics and much of his work did not appear in Russia for many ...
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 ...