SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 29 January 2022
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 24 January 2022
Sponsor of the day: Li Zhaoxin
Schealer, John M
(1920-2008) US businessman and author whose Zip-Zip sequences, beginning with Zip-Zip and His Flying Saucer (1956), offers Space Opera adventures for younger readers; Mars and Venus are visited harmlessly. The Sycamore Warrior: A Mystery of Ancient Egypt (1960) verges on the fantastic in its depiction of the effects of a mysterious statue on two young protagonists, one from 2650 BCE, the other from 1470 BCE. [JC]
Davidson, Steve
(1958- ) US fan (active with letters published in SF Magazines as early as 1978), editor and publisher. In 2012 he acquired the then-moribund Amazing Stories (which see), reviving it first as a lively website with a news and reviews blog, then with ebook and webzine issues, and – with help from Kickstarter funding – as a print magazine from August 2018 (#614 dated Fall 2018) to Summer 2020 (#619) with Ira Nayman as editor. Financial problems then led to ...
Yinhe Award
["Galaxy Award"] A prestigious accolade awarded intermittently since 1986, annually since 1991, to Chinese authors, originally organized as a collaboration between the magazines Zhuihui Shu ["Tree of Knowledge"] and Kexue Wenyi ["Science Literature and Art"]. With the folding of the former and the renaming of the latter as the more famous Kehuan Shijie ["SF World"], the award has become the sole prerogative of China's leading genre magazine, occasionally leading to gripes regarding bias and ...
Sanborn, Robin
(? - ) US author in whose Near Future novel, The Book of Stier (1971), a youth movement inspired by the Music of the mysterious Richard Stier overtopples all American institutions. As a sign of the devastation wreaked by this countercultural putsch, Canada eventually takes over the USA. [JC] see also: Messiahs. /
Hyams, Peter
(1943- ) US cinema director, producer and cinematographer, formerly a jazz drummer and television news anchorman; his first directed film of genre interest was Capricorn One (1977), which he also wrote: an exercise in Paranoia in which, with the unwise cooperation of NASA, a Mars mission is faked (Hyams is fond of government-based conspiracies). The next and perhaps his best is the "High Noon in space" adventure Outland (1981), set on Jupiter's moon Io. This was however ...
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 and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...