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Thursday 16 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 14 July 2026
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Harding, Ellison
(1883-1952) US businessman and author whose The Demetrian (1907; vt The Woman Who Vowed 1908) is a Utopia set about two years in the future. [JC]
Up
Animated film (2009). Pixar/Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Pete Docter. Written by Bob Peterson and Docter, based on a story by Docter, Peterson and Thomas McCarthy. Cast includes Edward Asner, Jordan Nagai and Christopher Plummer. 93 minutes. Colour. / A Lost World adventure with Steampunk flourishes, Up is most notable for containing two of the most effective tear-jerking scenes in cinema history. The first ...
Viger, A
Pseudonym of French geophysicist and author Alphonse Berget (1850-1933), almost certainly the instigator of and senior collaborator in the sf novel L'Anneau de Lumière: grand roman scientifique d'aventures (6 November 1921-4 February 1922 Le Petit Parisien; 1922; trans Brian Stableford as The Ring of Light 2018) with Léon Miral, both signing variously as Miral-Viger, or L ...
Utter, Virgil S
(1925-2006) US fan and bibliographer whose first publications were letters to Astounding in 1942 and 1944. He wrote or co-wrote several titles in the Galactic Central Bibliographies for the Avid Reader series. The entry for Phil Stephensen-Payne gives the full list of these useful booklets; only Utter's solo contributions, on George Allan England and Perley Poore ...
Physics
In discussing the scientific content of sf it is customary to regard the sciences as ranging from "hard" to "soft", with physics lying at the hard end of the spectrum (see Hard SF). A concern with the hard sciences is generally held to have characterized sf of the period 1940-1960, or a type of sf whose locus classicus is to be found in that period, and so we may expect this type of sf, in its scientific aspect, to be dominated by physics. In fact a large part ...
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 ...