SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 5 June 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 3 June 2023
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Star Trek: Enterprise
US tv series (2001-2005), titled simply Enterprise in seasons 1-2. Created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, based on Star Trek (1966-1969) created by Gene Roddenberry. Producers include Berman, Braga, Merri D Howard and Peter Lauritson. Directors include David Livingston, Allan Kroeker, Michael Vejar, Roxann Dawson, David Straiton, LeVar Burton, and Robert Duncan McNeill. ...
Hetherington, Victoria
(1989- ) Canadian editor and author, active from around 2010; her first novel, Mooncalves (2019), recruits a range of story devices from nonfantastic sources and the toolkit of Fantastika to give contour to the story of a violent outbreak of cult Religious frenzy in rural Quebec. She is of sf interest for her second novel, Autonomy (2022), which is set in a ...
Cultural Engineering
A phrase not especially common in sf Terminology, although what it refers to is fundamental to the genre. The idea of humans deliberately altering the nature of alien cultures (or of Aliens doing it to us), or indeed of doing the same to isolated cultures on Earth or colony worlds, is often evoked in sf – sometimes approvingly, slightly more often disapprovingly. This is especially so in stories in which ...
Fleming, A M
(1858-1948) US author known mainly for his sf-like Munchausen tale, Captain Kiddle: A Fantastic Romance (1889), in which the captain recounts to an interviewer his trip to the Arctic, where he and his crew are imprisoned by Lost Race of giants (see Great and Small), but escape and – after experiences with the Fountain of Youth and a very large serpent – discover an ancient ...
Astrogation
Literally, guidance by the stars. In sf Terminology this is the space equivalent of navigation, and the astrogator is conventionally one of the most important officers on a Spaceship. After a jump through Hyperspace, perhaps, it is necessary – although less frequently now than in the Golden Age of SF – for the astrogator to identify several stars, ...
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 ...