SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 15 December 2025
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 11 December 2025
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Varley, John
(1947-2025) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Picnic on Nearside" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 1974, and who was soon thought to be the most significant new sf writer of the late 1970s. He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments like cloning (see Clones) and Identity Transfer, many of ...
McCoy, Nathaniel P
Pseudonym of UK art publisher and author George Grandison Millar (circa 1860-1913), whose The Gold Makers (1911) is a thriller involving the Transmutation of metals. In real life Millar was a shareholder of the Scottish metallurgical company Kosmoid Ltd [see links below], established in 1904, which planned to produce mercury and perhaps gold by transmutation of lead; The Gold Makers is seemingly a roman à clef ...
Gibbins, David
(1962- ) Canadian archaeologist and author, partly resident in the UK, of whose novels Atlantis (2005) is of sf interest, as the rediscovered Atlantis proves to contain secrets of ancient science of planetary importance, and likely to cause a Holocaust, a threat dealt with in The Last Gospel (2008) and The Gods of Atlantis (2011). Crusader Gold (2006), a ...
Tonari no Yōkai-san
["The Yōkai Next to Me" or "My Neighbours the Yōkai"] Japanese animated tv series (2024). Liden Films. Based on the Manga by noho. Directed by Aimi Yamauchi. Written by Tomoko Konparu. Voice cast includes Ryosuke Higa, Yuki Kaji, Yō Taichi and Asaki Yuikawa. Thirteen 24-minute episodes. Colour. / In Japan the Supernatural Creatures known as Yokai live alongside human beings; ...
Viehl, S L
Pseudonym of US medical technician (specializing in trauma) and author Sheila Lynn Kelly (1961- ), who uses S L Viehl for her sf; she has also published as by Gena Hale, Jessica Hall, Rebecca Kelly and Lynn Viehl. Her sf titles are exclusively set in the StarDoc Universe, whose first subseries, the StarDoc sequence beginning with Stardoc (2000) and ending with Dream Called Time (2010), follows the ...
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 ...