SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 July 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 13 July 2026
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Collins, Gilbert
(1890-1960) UK author in various genres, in active service during World War One; his two Lost-World novels are of sf interest. The Valley of Eyes Unseen (1923) finds a Tibetan hidden valley inhabited by scientifically advanced descendants of Alexander the Great's Greeks, from whom the protagonist eventually escapes by purloining one of their Inventions, mechanical wings (see ...
OA, The
US online tv series (2016-current). Plan B Entertainment and Anonymous Content for Netflix. Created by Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling. Directed by Zal Batmanglij. Written by Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling, Melanie Marnich, Dominic Orlando and Ruby Rae Spiegel. Cast includes Hiam Abbass, Riz Ahmed, Ian Alexander, Will Brill, Emory Cohen, Patrick Gibson, Jason Isaacs, Alice Krige, Brit Marling, Brendan Meyer, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Brandon Perea, Phyllis Smith, Zoey Todorovsky, Paz Vega and ...
Souvestre, Émile
(1806-1854) French teacher, journalist and author whose seeming Utopia, Le Monde Tel Qu'il Sera (1846; trans Margaret Clarke as The World as It Shall Be 2004), gives a complexly Satirical portrait of the world its protagonists have attained via a lengthy period of death-like Suspended Animation, making their Sleeper-Awakes revival in ...
Coppel, Alfred
Working name of US author (and wartime fighter pilot) Alfredo José de Araña-Marini y Coppel Jr (1921-2004) who also wrote as Robert Cham Gilman and Sol Galaxan (for one story only, 1953). He began publishing sf with "Age of Unreason" in Astounding for December 1947, and published a good deal of magazine fiction in the next decade, though he was in fact producing considerably more in other genres with such action novels as Hero Driver (1954). ...
Anderson, Sylvia
(1927-2016) UK writer, voice actress, costume designer and film and Television producer, best known for work created in collaboration with Gerry Anderson, her husband from 1960 to 1981. Early work as a television production assistant included the children's fantasy series The Adventures of Twizzle (1957-1959) and Torchy the Battery Boy (1959-1960), directed (the latter for season 1 only) by Gerry ...
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 ...