SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 6 January 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Dark
German tv series (2017-2020). Netflix/W&B Television. Created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. Directed by Baran bo Odar. Written by Odar and Friese. Other writers are Martin Behnke, Daphne Ferraro, Ronny Schalk and Marc O Seng. Cast includes Karoline Eichhorn, Dietrich Hollinderbäumer, Louis Hoffmann, Oliver Masucci, Andreas Pietschmann, Maja Schöne, Christian Steyer, Jördis Triebel and Lisa Vicari. 26 episodes of 44 to 73 minutes. Colour. / This high-concept ...
Berna, Paul
Pseudonym of French author Jean-Marie-Edmond Sabran (1908-1994), prolific in various genres, who also wrote as Joël Audrenn, Bernard Deleuze and Paul Gerrard; of his many books for children as by Paul Berna, the most famous is the non-fantastic Le cheval sans tête (1955; trans John Buchanan-Brown as A Hundred Million Francs 1957). Of his several tales of sf interest, the Threshold of the Stars sequence – comprising ...
Bengal
Describing sf in Bangla (or the Bengali language) is a topic fraught with difficulties. Any understanding of sf in this linguistic region must begin with an analysis of kalpabigyan, the term generally used as a very rough analogue to sf in Bangla at present. / First of all, there are problems of definition, as kalpabigyan, which is a recent formulation (see below), has a wider range of meanings and applications than those usually associated with sf, because at least in part it ...
Pottinger, Stanley
(1940- ) US lawyer, banker and author of two sf novels, each involving advances in Medicine: The Fourth Procedure (1995), in which foetal transplants have become possible, igniting a religious debate in America; and A Slow Burning (1999), set in the very Near Future where a brilliant neurosurgeon, using Nanotechnology, is able to repair damaged ...
Suddaby, Donald
(1900-1964) UK author, mostly for children, whose first work was Scarlet-Dragon: A Little Chinese Phantasy (1923 chap), a seemingly self-published jeu d'esprit. He began publishing work of genre interest as Alan Griff with stories like "The Emerald" (August 1930 Colour), "The Coming of Glugm" (September 1930 Colour), which is Prehistoric SF, and "House of Desolation" (January 1934 Cornhill); his first sf novel was ...
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 ...