SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 13 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: Conversation 2023
Valentine, Genevieve
(1981- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "29 Union Leaders Can't be Wrong" in Strange Horizons for June 2007; most of her work has been fantasy, including her first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti (2011), where acrobats acquire exquisitely light steel skeletons through Magic, set in a world whose Steampunk atmosphere is ...
Star Wars Games
The Star Wars intellectual property is of interest as perhaps the archetypal example of an sf transmedia canon which has evolved from a series of films into a franchise which is now continued primarily through Ties (see Star Wars) and (commercially more significant) Videogames. These latter works deal variously with the adventures of characters who do not ...
Tolstoy, Alexei
(1883-1945) Russian author, sometimes mistakenly thought to have been a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910); he was not in fact a blood relative of the famous Tolstoy, though his mother's second husband was related, and gave Tolstoy his surname. Tolstoy is best known for two books whose first versions appeared in the experimental 1920s and both of which were revised in the decade of terror which followed. Aelita (first version #6 1922-#1-2 1923 Krasnaya Nov' as "Aelita ...
Kuprin, Alexander
(1870-1938) Russian author, active from before 1890, whose first novella of significance, "Moloch" (December 1896 Russkoye Bogatstvo), goes to extremities akin to Fantastika in its attempts to render the terror and disastrousness of unfettered capitalist exploitation. Most of his remaining oeuvre is nonfantastic, though some sf is assembled in a French translation, Le soleil liquide et autres récits fantastiques ...
Monty Python's Flying Circus
UK tv series (1969-1974). A BBC production. Produced by Ian MacNaughton. Created, starring and written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. Other regular actors included Connie Booth, Carol Cleveland, Neil Innes (final series) and Ian MacNaughton. Four series comprising 45 episodes of 25-30 minutes. Colour. / The anarchic/surreal ...
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 ...