SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 14 July 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 14 July 2025
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Varlet, Théo
(1878-1938) French poet, translator and author, active from before 1900, though only after World War One as a novelist. Tales of sf interest include Les Titans du ciel (1921) and L'agonie de la Terre (1922) both with Octave Joncquel and comprising together one novel, L'épopée martienne: L'agonie de la Terre: Roman planétaire ("omni" 1922; trans Brian Stableford as The Martian Epic ...
Time Traveler's Wife, The
Film (2009). New Line Cinema presents a Plan B and Nick Weschler production. Directed by Robert Schwentke. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin, based on the novel The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger. Cast includes Eric Bana, Philip Craig, Alex Ferris, Arliss Howard, Ron Livingston, Rachel McAdams, Hailey McCann, Tatum McCann, Jane McLean, Michelle Nolden, Brooklynn Proulx and Stephen Tobolowsky. 103 minutes. Colour. / A ...
Tulli, Magdalena
(1955- ) Polish author whose work interfuses mythopoeisis with experimental applications of topoi typical of modern Fantastika. In Sny i kamienie (1995; trans Bill Johnston as Dreams and Stones 2004), a great City self-creates in the heart of the complex culture of a complex continent; W czerwieni (1998; trans Bill Johnston as In Red 2011) follows the "life" ...
Hersey, John
(1914-1993) US author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, born to missionary parents in China where he lived until he was ten; he is perhaps best known for his early book-length essay on the first use of the atomic bomb in warfare, Hiroshima (31 August 1946 The New Yorker; 1946), probably the first text to qualify as a "non-fiction novel", and the most illustrious example of the form. The Child Buyer (1960), a Near-Future ...
Xenoforming
A term logically based on the more familiar Terraforming, to denote the (usually gradual) transformation of a world to suit Alien rather than Earth-human Biology and Ecology. / The highest sf drama arises when xenoforming attempts are initiated by Extraterrestrials wishing to transform Earth for their own purposes. The Red Weed introduced ...
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 ...