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Monday 16 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 16 February 2026
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Wessells, Henry
(1960- ) US antiquarian bookseller, editor, small press publisher and author who began to publish sf outside the genre with "Virtual Wisdom" for Exquisite Corpse in 1992, a literary journal edited by Andrei Codrescu, and within the genre with "From This Swamp" in The Starry Wisdom (anth 1994) edited by D M Mitchell. In 1993, , he began to compile bibliographical information relating to the work of Avram Davidson. His ...
Oates, Joyce Carol
(1938- ) US author who has also written as by Fernandes, Lauren Kelly and Rosamond Smith. Her immensely prolific career – at least seventy-seven novels; somewhere approaching 1000 short stories, many of them long and ambitious, most but not all assembled in forty or more collections; plus fifty plays and much other work – has in itself been a barrier to her proper appreciation. In recent years, however, despite its almost unassimilable and unremitting growth, ...
Man Who Fell to Earth, The
Film (1976). British Lion/A Cinema V Release. Directed by Nicolas Roeg. Written by Paul Mayersberg, based on The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963) by Walter Tevis. Cast includes David Bowie, Candy Clark, Buck Henry and Rip Torn. 140 minutes; first US showing cut to 118 minutes. Colour. / In this UK film set in the USA, the clear-cut narrative of Tevis's evocative novel – ...
Hyams, Peter
(1943- ) US cinema director, producer and cinematographer, formerly a jazz drummer and television news anchorman; his first directed film of genre interest was Capricorn One (1977), which he also wrote: an exercise in Paranoia in which, with the unwise cooperation of NASA, a Mars mission is faked (Hyams is fond of government-based conspiracies). The next and perhaps his best is ...
Pawle, Hanbury
(1886-1972) UK soldier, politician and author of Before Dawn (1955), a Future History of conservative hue, in which Christianity triumphs against Communism. [JC]
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 ...