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Tuesday 17 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
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
GURPS
Role Playing Game (1986). Steve Jackson Games (SJG). Designed by Steve Jackson. / Although it was preceded by such earlier attempts as Worlds of Wonder (1982 Chaosium) designed by Steve Henderson, Gordon Monson, Steve Perrin, Greg Stafford, Lynn Willis, GURPS (the Generic Universal Role Playing System) was the first widely popular attempt to produce a set of mechanics for ...
Operation: Peril
US Comic (1950-1953). American Comics Group (ACG). 16 issues. Artists include Ken Bald, Ogden Whitney and George Wilhelms. Scriptwriters include Richard Hughes. #1-#6, 52 pages; #7-#16, 36 pages. At first each issue had three long strip series (#1 and #3 also having an additional one-off strip), some short text stories, plus various short strips (usually non-fiction); from #12 the series strips increased to four. / ...
Lederman, Frank
(? - ) UK author, possibly pseudonymous, of Tremor (1952), which depicts a planetary Disaster and its consequences. [JC]
Gravity [film]
American film (2013). Warner Brothers/Esperanto Filmoj/Heyday Films. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Written by Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón. Cast includes Sandra Bullock, George Clooney and Ed Harris (voice only). 90 minutes. Colour. / In an undefined Near Future (or perhaps, an undefined alternate near past; see Alternate History), America is still operating a space shuttle and the ...
Eastwick, James
(1850-1939) UK author, tentatively identified as the solicitor (later barrister) whose birth and death appear below. He published one work of sf interest, The New Centurion: A Tale of Automatic War (September-October 1895 Longman's Magazine; 1895 chap), which argues in a thinly fictionalized Near Future frame that naval contests in any Future War will be determined by technologies enabling the remote control of ...
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 ...