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Monday 24 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
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Wilks, Mike
(1947- ) UK illustrator and author, who began to publish drawings of genre interest with his highly intricate, architecturally imaginative portrayal of the eponymous Edifice or City conceived in conjunction with a long narrative poem by Brian W Aldiss as Pile: Petals from St Klaed's Computer (graph 1979). Pile itself – drawn by Wilks in terms evocative of the work of M C Escher and Giovanni Battista Piranesi – is a claustrophobic but playful expression of the ...
Lyons, Steve
(? - ) UK author, almost exclusively of Ties to various enterprises, primarily the Doctor Who universe, beginning with Doctor Who: New Adventures: Conundrum (1994) and Doctor Who: New Adventures: Head Games (1995), each part of a complicated Alternate History subset of tales known (perhaps unsurprisingly) as the Alternate History Cycle. Lyons continued contributing to several other ascertainably divisible parts of the overall Doctor Who world; he also ...
Gibbons, Gavin
(1922-1978) UK publisher and author of both nonfiction and fiction; of the latter, By Space Ship to the Moon: A Tale of Adventure in Outer Space for Boys (1958), a Young Adult tale whose modestly familiar contents are hinted at in the full title. Other titles with a sound of sf – like The Coming of the Space Ships (1956) or They Rode in Space Ships (1957) – are in fact UFO books, and are technically nonfiction. [JC]
Colfer, Eoin
(1965- ) Irish schoolteacher and author for Young Adult audiences from his first book, Benny and Omar (1998), which is not fantastic. His other singletons are, however of fantasy interest: the young protagonist of The Wish List (2000), who has died, is given a chance to redeem her soul by doing good works back on Earth; The Supernaturalist (2004) is set in the Near Future but is essentially fantasy. Of particular interest is ... And Another Thing ...: Douglas Adams's ...
Easton, Thomas A
(1944- ) US critic, author and biology teacher (he holds a PhD in theoretical biology) who is best known for the Reference Library book-review column he wrote for Analog from 1979 to 2008, where he covered a wide range of titles with strict fairness, though he was not often granted the room to delve deep; a selection of 250 individual reviews from the 1980s and 1990s was assembled as Periodic Stars (coll 1997). His first story was "Next" for Adam in 1974, and he has since ...
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 ...