SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 12 October 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 12 October 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Brautigan, Richard
(1935-1984) US author and poet, known primarily for his work outside the sf field. Most of his whimsically surreal fiction – like A Confederate General from Big Sur (1964) or Trout Fishing in America (1967) – lies on the borderline of Fantasy, but does not pass over. In Watermelon Sugar (1968), set in an indeterminate hippie-pastoral setting, echoes the Post-Holocaust novels of ...
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
Film (1971). Apjac/Twentieth Century Fox. Directed by Don Taylor. Written be Paul Dehn, based on characters created by Pierre Boulle. Cast includes Bradford Dillman, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall, Natalie Trundy and William Windom. 97 minutes. Colour. / This is the third of the five Planet of the Apes films. When screenwriter Paul Dehn had been working ...
Quinn, Tory
(? - ) US scientist and author whose first novel, Twilight of the Gods (2021), is fantasy; in the Young Adult Mindborg (2022), the scientist father of a son with epilepsy attempts a surgical procedure to cure him, but fails, while simultaneously awakening Superpowers that arouse inimical attention; for a description of MegaDeath (2022) with Marie ...
Coonts, Stephen
(1946- ) US editor and author, most of his work, like his first publication, Flight of the Intruder (1986), being nonfantastic Technothrillers in military settings. In his Saucer sequence, comprising Saucer (2003) and Saucer: The Conquest (2005), a young man discovers an ancient artefact – the eponymous spaceship – and must fight friend and foe in order to retain it in order to ...
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 ...