SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 18 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.
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Saknussemm, Kris
(1961- ) US-born author, in Australia and elsewhere from early manhood; the mysterious protagonist of his first novel, Zanesville: A Novel (2005), begins a Fantastic Voyage through a Near Future America, starting from New York; the book, which contains sf elements embedded into the text after the manner of the early Rudy Rucker, ...
Chadwick, Philip George
(1893-1955) UK author, an insurance broker's clerk at the time of World War One, in which he served. His only novel, The Death Guard (1939), was a Scientific Romance that made little impact at the time of publication: almost certainly most of the first edition was blitzed during the destruction of Paternoster Row around midnight 29-30 December 1940 in what came to be known as the Second Great Fire of London, ...
Interactive Narrative
The outcome of any given game is inherently uncertain, since it must be possible to win or lose (or, in the case of Toy Games, to play at will). Yet stories, as normally understood, should have a beginning, a middle and an end, and only one of each. Games which include stories – referred to in this encyclopedia as Interactive Narratives – have thus proved difficult to design. There has also been considerable debate as to whether it is desirable, or even ...
Green Arrow
DC Comics Superhero, created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp in 1941. He has no Superpowers, but his use of modestly innovative Weapons and equipment in battling criminals makes him, like Batman, of marginal sf interest, and of course he had some encounters with Aliens and ...
Parkman, Sydney
(1895-1995) UK author, usually of adventure fiction, but including two humorous sf tales: Ship Ashore (1936), in which the descendants of a seventeenth-century shipwreck are found on a mysterious Island off the coast of Borneo, and Life Begins Tomorrow (1947), the latter set in the Near Future. [JC]
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 ...