SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 7 February 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 6 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
New Pathways
US Semiprozine, full title New Pathways into Science Fiction and Fantasy, 20 issues, March 1986 to Winter 1992; letter-size format, bimonthly to #6, then quarterly becoming irregular; edited and published by Michael G Adkisson from Plano, Texas, who also provided much of the magazine's artwork for the early issues. Lively, but struggling for readership, New Pathways mixed fiction, features and Comic strips, all at the ...
Omni Online
US website originally an extension of Omni magazine but which continued in its own right once Omni ceased its print publication with the Winter 1995 issue. Omni had first set up an internet presence via Compuserve in September 1986 allowing subscribers access to a condensed version of the print magazine, an interactive "discussion" feature and the Omni Data Library. This facility was dubbed "Omni On-line" even at that stage. The experiment was ...
Rankin, Robert
(1949- ) UK author who began writing his highly idiosyncratic sf novels with the Brentford sequence beginning with The Antipope (1981), The Brentford Triangle (1983) and East of Ealing (1984), these three assembled as The Brentford Trilogy (omni 1988); the final volume in the sequence, Retromancer (2009), is a spoof Hitler Wins ...
Syvertsen, Ryder
(1941-2015) US author specializing in sf and fantasy adventure sequences, the only one to appear under his own name being the Mystic Rebel series beginning with Mystic Rebel (1988) and ending with Cave of the Master (1990). Also under his own name he wrote Psychic Spawn (1987) with Adrian Fletcher (pseudonym of Rosemary Ellen Guiley); and with Jan Stacy he wrote The Great Book of Movie Monsters (1983). ...
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 ...