SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 6 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 1 December 2025
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Finlay, Adrianne
(? - ) US academic and author of two Young Adult novels of sf interest. Your One & Only (2018), set in a distant Near Future, follows the solitary life of the sole human being left after the whole of Homo sapiens has died off in a vast Pandemic (see End of the World); only ...
Steve Miller Band, The
US rock group formed by Steve Miller (1947- ), whose first album Children of the Future (1968) strung a varied portfolio of blues and psychedelic songs along a vaguely future-oriented sf conceit. "Brave New World" (on Brave New World, 1969) is not a version of Aldous Huxley's novel, and indeed develops an unironized Utopian vision. "Space Cowboy" from the same album saw Miller ...
Retcon
Shorthand for "retroactive continuity", the rewriting of established back-story, also used as a verb; a widespread practice in Comics and far from unknown in sf prose series. Its first appearance was in the letter column of the DC Comics title All-Star Squadron #18 for February 1983, actually on sale three months before the notional date. The term as originally conceived referred to continuity inserts that added to existing story ...
Callaghan, Jo
(circa1970- ) UK author of the Kat and Lock sequence of Near-Future crime thrillers beginning with In the Blink of an Eye (2023). A partnering of police officer Kat Frank with a Computer-housed AI AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detecting Entity) who goes by the name Lock enables the solving of crimes not decipherable without intuitionally acute ...
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 ...