SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 7 October 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 6 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Brust, Steven
(1955- ) Hungarian-descended US author, almost exclusively of Fantasy, notably the long Vlad Taltos series and the swashbuckling Alexandre Dumas-like Khaavren Romances set earlier in the same universe. He is mentioned here chiefly for Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille (1990), an intermittently comic spoof about a saloon which dodges atomic ...
Gibbons, Cromwell
(1893-1977) US author – probably the working name of Francis Cromwell Gibbons, a chemical engineer whose two-book thriller sequence featuring the Pulp magazine-style para-legal scientific detective Rex Huxford comprises Murder in Hollywood (1936) – set amid the California film industry, with some mildly speculative radio Communications – and The Bat Woman ...
Zhao, Xiran Jay
(1997- ) Chinese-born author, in Canada from about the age of ten; they are of sf interest for the Iron Widow sequence beginning with the Young Adult Iron Widow (2021), where visual topoi from Anime enliven with deliberately garish exuberance an otherwise downbeat narrative. In a long fight against Mecha bent on ...
Monster Howls
Letter-size saddle-stapled Cinema Humour magazine printed on newsprint. Published by Robert C Sproul as Humour-Visions Incorporated. Editor: Milton Duggan. One issue only: December 1966. / Seemingly intended to test the waters for Sproul's For Monsters Only, this magazine appears to have been reasonably successful. It featured black and white photographs from various ...
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 ...