SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 12 August 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 10 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: Kees van Toorn and LAcon V
Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Shining Future, The
Short US film (1944). Warner Bros. Directed by LeRoy Prinz. Written by James Bloodworth and Mannie Manheim. Cast includes Olive Blakeney, Jimmy Lydon and Charles Ruggles. 21 minutes. Black and white. / A man sitting at a desk greets Canada: "What you are about to see is an imaginative glimpse into the future, a Hollywood view of the year 1960. We'll see some rather startling things, some of which may be commonplace by then. Here we go, to the City of the ...
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
(1804-1864) US author, father of Julian Hawthorne, whose work in the literatures of the fantastic – a surprisingly high proportion of his oeuvre – concentrates supernatural fiction, much of this material being rationalized, however, in sf terms. One of the formative figures in US literature, Hawthorne was intrigued throughout his writing career by themes that would become common to sf. His extensive notebooks outline dozens of projected sf works ...
Cunningham, Scott
(1956-1993) US author of many popular works on Wicca, and of Operation: Death Ray (1982), an unassuming sf adventure featuring the eponymous Ray. [JC]
Le Plongeon, Alice Dixon
(1851-1910) UK photographer, traveller, amateur archaeologist and author who, with her husband Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908), spent from 1873 to 1885 in Mexico and South America, photographing still-extant ruins (over 2000 negatives, held in various archives, have survived); and suggesting on a Eurocentric diffusionist model that the pre-Columbian civilizations of America were copies of the civilization of Atlantis. Her interest in ...
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 ...