SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 12 December 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 11 December 2025
Sponsor of the day: Stuart Hopen
Varley, John
(1947-2025) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Picnic on Nearside" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 1974, and who was soon thought to be the most significant new sf writer of the late 1970s. He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments like cloning (see Clones) and Identity Transfer, many of ...
New Pathways
US Semiprozine, full title New Pathways into Science Fiction and Fantasy, 20 issues, March 1986 to Winter 1992; letter-size format, bimonthly to #6, then quarterly becoming irregular; edited and published by Michael G Adkisson from Plano, Texas, who also provided much of the magazine's artwork for the early issues. Lively, but struggling for readership, New Pathways mixed fiction, features and Comic strips, all at the ...
Wright, J C
(1874-1939) US author, most of his work focused on Native American civilizations, several of his titles, like The Crooked Tree: Indian Legends and a Short History of the Little Traverse Bay Region (coll 1917) containing his versions of traditional material. He is of some sf interest for The Great Myth (1922), a Lost Race tale about the Mound People, which treats his central concerns. This author, who was sometimes known as John C ...
Bahnson, Agnew H, Jr
(1915-1964) US author, textile-machinery manufacturer and speculative thinker much involved in problems of Gravity; fittingly, his Near-Future political thriller, The Stars Are too High (1959), features a Scientific Hoax in which fake Aliens with a real gravity-driven ship try to bring peace to the world. After his death in a plane crash, the University of ...
Pallander, Edwin
Pseudonym of UK biologist, botanist and author Lancelot Francis Sanderson Bayly (1869-1952), who collaborated with Ellsworth Douglass on one story, "The Wheels of Dr Gynochio Gyves" (September 1899 Cassell's), the protagonist's last Invention being a Spaceship capable of reaching the Moon. Across the Zodiac: A Story of Adventure (1896) is an ...
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 ...