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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
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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 ...
Mitchell, V E
Working name of US author Victoria Estelle Mitchell Gustafson (1954-2017), married to Jon Gustafson, who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Captain" in The Moscow Moffia Presents Rat Tales (anth 1987) edited by Jon Gustafson (her husband) and Dean Wesley Smith under the joint pseudonym Smith Gustafson. Mitchell wrote four novel Ties ...
From Beyond
Film (1986). Taryn/Empire. Executive producer Charles Band. Directed by Stuart Gordon. Written by Dennis Paoli, loosely based on "From Beyond" (June 1934 The Fantasy Fan) by H P Lovecraft. Cast includes Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon and Ted Sorel. 85 minutes. Colour. / With three of the same leading players, the same production team, and ...
Oppel, Kenneth
(1967- ) Canadian author most of whose early work, beginning with an adolescent fantasy, Colin's Fantastic Video Adventure (1985), comprises Young Adult fantasy series, including the Silverwing Universe sequence [not listed below] and the Matt Curse sequence beginning with Airborn (2004), a Steampunk sequence set in an ...
Speer, Jack
(1920-2008) US fan, attorney and author, an early member of Fandom who was active from the mid-1930s, publishing a letter in Wonder Stories for September 1934. In fandom he also used the hoax persona John A Bristol, chiefly in 1938-1939 (but see below). He published the first significant history of the fan community as an instalment of his Fanzine Full Length Articles (1938-1960s), each of whose ...
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 ...