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Monday 13 April 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.
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Gray, Nicholas Stuart
(1912-1981) UK actor, playwright, illustrator and author, born Phyllis Loriot Hatch, under which name she produced some unpublished plays, and worked as an actor on the professional British stage from around 1930 until the end of the decade. At this point that identity was retired, and Nicholas Stuart Gray presented as male from around 1939; he underwent a medical transition in 1959 (very early for Female-to-Male procedures). In his later life, he frequently performed in his own plays, most ...
Foster, George C
(1893-1975) UK author, in active service during World War One, who also published as by Seaforth; in his first novel, The Lost Garden (1930), Immortal survivors of Atlantis, which has sunk after a trans-Atlantic tunnel collapses, experience world history up to the present, finding little of significance to remark upon. In almost all his speculative fiction, conventional plots are ...
Future Boy Conan
Japanese animated tv series (1978; vt Conan, The Boy in Future). Original title Mirai Shōnen Konan. Based on the novel The Incredible Tide (1970) by Alexander Key. Nippon Animation. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Written by Satoshi Kurumi, Akira Nakano and Sōji Yoshikawa. Voice cast includes Iemasa Kayumi, Ichirô Nagai, Mieko Nobusawa, Noriko Ohara, ...
Triffid
Well-known Term denoting the ambulant, Poison-stinging, vegetable Monsters which harass the mostly blinded remnants of humanity in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (6 January-3 February 1951 Collier's Weekly; as "Revolt of the Triffids"; 1951; rev 1951; orig version vt Revolt of the Triffids ...
Pollack, Alan
(1964- ) US illustrator who studied art at the New York colleges the School of Visual Arts, the Parsons School of Design and the New School of Figurative Art. He began to publish work of genre interest in 1991 with a cover picture for TSR's Role Playing Game magazine Dungeon, and for some years was a staff artist for TSR. He has since produced illustrations for other gaming companies (including cards for the Wizards of the ...
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 ...