SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 7 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 1 December 2025
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Robbins, David
(1950- ) US author, prolific in several genres under various names, his first novel, The Wereling (1983), being horror; perhaps best known for the nonfantastic Wilderness sequence of Westerns as by David Thompson. He is of greatest sf interest for the Endworld Post-Holocaust Survivalist sequence, which begins with ...
Monette, Paul
(1945-1995) US poet and author, winner of the National Book Award for his memoir Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story (1992), though an earlier nonfiction text, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988) has remained more prominent. He is best remembered as an effective and eloquent delineator of gay life in America, and as an activist for gay rights, mostly in the context of AIDS. He is of modest sf interest for some Ties, beginning with ...
Dunne, Thomas L
(1946- ) US author whose first novel, The Scourge (1978), is a medical sf thriller (see Medicine) in which a cancer plague causes widespread Disaster, a Pandemic which devastates much of the western world. [JC]
Future Science Fiction Digest
US professional Digest magazine, also available in ebook form, published by UFO Publishing, Brooklyn, New York, and edited by Alex Shvartsman. There was an advance issue #0 dated May 2018 which was all-reprint, but from December 2018 it became a regular quarterly magazine devoted primarily to international sf, either reprinted and translated from non-US sources (see SF in Translation) or stories drawing upon the cultures of other ...
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 ...