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Friday 14 August 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 10 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Richberg, Eloise O
(1849-1924) US physician and author, of interest for Reinstern (1900), a Utopia which the protagonists of the tale think is in the depths of western America, and reachable (though it takes "interminable hours" to arrive) by train. In fact, they have been transported, by something not here called Matter Transmission, to the planet Reinstern, where they learn how a moderately socialist world can work to everyone's ...
Schwartz, Helen Ruth
(? - ) US author whose sf novel, The Meadowlark Sings (2006), is set in a Near Future Dystopian America governed by the fundamentalist right whose homophobia (see Sex) is given teeth by the discovery of the "Scarpetta gene", which causes homosexuality. When in 2018 an earthquake calves off part of California, which becomes an ...
Gillette, King Camp
(1855-1932) US salesman and industrialist who partially invented and wholly made practicable the disposal safety razor, founding the company that now bears his name in 1901; his works as an author, sometimes as by King C Gillette, were universally focused on Utopian solutions to the dilemmas he saw infecting the rapidly expanding capitalist world, beginning with The Human Drift (1894), which advocates a socialist, pollution-free, non-competition-based ...
Fretland, Don J
(? - ) US author of the Oleandre Trilogy series beginning with The Persimmion Sequence (1970), set in a Near Future Dystopian world where scientists have been driven Underground though – it may be – there is some hope that Mars clings to independence. [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 ...