SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 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 13 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
Singer, Nicky
(1956-2023) UK publisher, television worker, author and playwright who co-founded the Performing Arts Lab charity. Her first novel Feather Boy (2002) is a compelling Young Adult tale tinged with Magic Realism and deceptive hints of the ability to fly (see Psi Powers) but is ultimately nonfantastic. Young adult novels of direct genre interest are The Innocent's Story ...
Venus
Because Earth's inner neighbour in the Solar System presented a bright and featureless face to early astronomers, it became something of a mystery planet. Nineteenth-century astronomers and early-twentieth-century sf writers generally imagined that, as the featureless face was a permanent cloud layer, the surface beneath must be warm and wet; the Venus of the imagination became a planet of vast oceans (perhaps with no land at all) or sweltering jungles. In the ...
Lacroix, Paul
(1806-1884) French bibliographer and author who published under a variety of names, including P L Jacob and Bibliophile, and who was possibly an anonymous collaborator with Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and certainly did anonymous work for Alexandre Dumas. He is of sf interest for La Danse Macabre: histoire fantastique du XVème siecle (1832 as by P L Jacob, Bibliophile; trans Brian Stableford as ...
Wilson, Gahan
(1930-2019) American artist and author, best known for his work outside the genre as a cartoonist, his career beginning in the mid-1940s; associated mainly for many decades with such Slick magazines as Playboy (from 1957) and The New Yorker (from 1980). The bizarre and often macabre sense of Humour he displayed in his innumerable cartoons, though influenced by such precursors as Charles ...
Lide, Alice
(1890-1955) US author of juvenile fiction, mostly set in Northern climes; her one title of Children's SF interest, Princess of Yucatan (1939), is a Lost Race tale set (unusually for her) in Mexico. [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 ...