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Thursday 10 July 2025
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 2025
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Mead, Harold
(1910-1997) Indian-born author, in the UK from an early age. The first and better known of his sf novels, The Bright Phoenix (1955), is a sombrely told Ruined Earth tale in which a reestablished but over-regimented Utopian culture tries unsuccessfully to reinhabit abandoned parts of the Earth; it ends a little sentimentally with a Second Coming. The other, Mary's Country (1957), tells of the quest of a ...
Myers, Howard L
(1930-1971) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Reluctant Weapon" in Galaxy for December 1952, and who published a number of tales over the next decade or so, usually as by Verge Foray; his only novel, Cloud Chamber (1977), attractively combines Cosmology, Antimatter invaders of our Universe, Sex and effortless rebirth of all sentient beings ...
Chester, Deborah A
(1957- ) US author whose earlier work was written as by Jay D Blakeney or as by Sean Dalton, but who has published under her own name since 1996. Her Anthi sequence – The Children of Anthi (1985) and Requiem for Anthi (1990), written as by Jay D Blakeney – aroused some interest. It is a far-reaching and moderately complex vision of humanity's future Evolution, guided by the eponymous ...
Shedley, Ethan I
Pseudonym of Belgian-born software engineer and author Boris Beizer (1934-2018), in the US from May 1941; most of his publications [not listed below] concern computer system architecture and software testing. In his novel Earth Ship and Star Song (1979) the survivors of destructive Climate Change escape from the Ruined Earth, but while developing their Faster Than Light ...
Worlds Unknown
Anthology Comic (1973-1975) created by Roy Thomas for Marvel Comics. A high-quality attempt to produce a non-Superhero sf comic, this series featured adaptations of well-known sf stories by such authors as L Sprague de Camp, Harry Bates, Edmond Hamilton, Theodore ...
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 ...