SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 16 July 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 14 July 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
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 ...
Moore, Ronald D
(1964- ) US screenwriter and Television producer who attended Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and whose first work of genre interest was the script for "The Bonding" (23 October 1989), an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994). He became co-producer and – for the final year – producer of this series, writing or co-writing 27 episodes in all, ...
Laserblast
Film (1978). Irwin Yablans. Produced by Charles Band. Directed by Michael Rae. Written by Franne Schacht, Frank Ray Perilli. Cast includes Kim Milford, Gianni Russo and Cheryl Smith. 80 minutes. Colour. / In this ill-made, low-budget exploitation movie a miserable teenager finds in the desert an amulet and a laser left by Aliens. The amulet makes his eyes glow red; taken over by the alien persona, he revenges himself with ...
Lessing, Doris
(1919-2013) Persian- (Iranian-) born author, in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) 1925-1949, in UK subsequently. Her long career – which eventually earned her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 – can be roughly divided into two broad periods. She began publishing stories in 1948, and from that date until the end of the 1960s she was best known for searching mimetic novels which acutely anatomized a range of topics, from the post-colonial role of ...
Foster, Eugie
(1971-2014) US short story author, almost always of fantasy tales, beginning with "Second Daughter" in Leading Edge for December 2002, and publishing her short work prolifically until the end of 2013; she died very young of respiratory failure connected to a brain tumour. Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast (February 2009 Interzone; 2011 ebook) won a ...
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 ...