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Thursday 10 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.
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Tuckerisms
Item of fan Terminology usually denoting the Recursive-SF naming of fictional characters for members of the sf and fan community. The term derives from Wilson Tucker, who frequently "tuckerized" friends and whose Wild Talent (1954; exp 1955; vt The Man from Tomorrow 1955) is a classic – though far from the first – instance. Character surnames in this ...
Silvera, Adam
(1990- ) US author whose first novel, the Young Adult More Happy Than Not (2015; exp 2020), explores with considerable intricacy and depth the existential cruces faced by a young man from a conservative family in a heterosexual relationship who discovers he is gay. His medical solution to this dilemma – to submit to a Memory Edit through the Leteo Institute to excise his ...
Palmer, Diana
Pseudonym of US author Susan Spaeth Kyle (1946- ), who has also published occasionally under her own name; most of her many novels are Westerns or romance tales, usually as by Palmer. Of sf interest is The Morcai Battalion (1980; rev 2008 as by Palmer), a Space Opera set in a Galactic Empire riven by a vast war. [JC]
Clichés
Sf clichés have developed, perhaps, partly out of a need for identification of stories as genuine sf – readers know where they are with a time-space warp – but mainly out of the lazy and parsimonious recycling of ideas at every level. The most obvious are cliché gadgets (Blaster, Android, Hyperspace drive, Cyborg, ...
Wetmore, Claude H
(1863-1944) US author of several novels. Of sf interest is Sweepers of the Sea: The Story of a Strange Navy (1900), written with the assistance of Robert M Yost, in which two young Incans – from a Lost World where Incan science has evolved – resolve to create the United States of Incaland and to dominate the Southern Hemisphere as the USA does the Northern. With the aid of Incan lore and treasure they create a navy of impregnable ships ...
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 ...