SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 24 September 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 18 September 2023
Sponsor of the day: Terrence Somerville
Spencer, Leonard G
Ziff-Davis House Name used at least twice by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett in collaboration, for the stories "The Beast With 7 Tails" (August 1956 Amazing) and "The Girl from Bodies, Inc." (October 1956 Fantastic). A third Spencer story, "The Man with the X-Ray Eyes" (February 1957 ...
Morris, Jan
(1926-2020) UK travel writer and historian, from just after World War Two until the mid-1970s as James Morris; A Venetian Bestiary (1982) is fantasticated within its conventional frame, but she is of genuine sf interest for Last Letters from Hav (1985; exp vt as coll, Hav 2006). In the 1985 iteration, a travel writer named Morris sojourns in the vastly intricate Middle Eastern peninsula and City called Hav, a ...
Birkenhead, The Earl of
Title and working name of UK lawyer, politician and author Frederick Edwin Smith (1872-1930), an upwardly-mobile, hugely energetic and ambitious Tory, the kind of figure who informs much of the work of John Buchan and who dies (in Buchan's work and in life) from overwork; he was ennobled upon becoming Lord Chancellor in 1919. He is of sf interest for the surprising combination of sober prescience and tomfoolery in the nonfiction 100 Years from Now ... ...
McNelly, Willis E
(1920-2003) US academic, sf critic and editor long based at California State University at Fullerton, where he gave what were among the earlier sf classes in the USA. His anthologies include the Mars-themed Mars, We Love You (anth 1971; vt The Book of Mars 1976) edited with Jane Hipolito, Above the Human Landscape: A Social Science Fiction Anthology (anth 1972) edited with Leon E Stover and ...
Starquest
Videogame series (from 1980). Automated Simulations (AS). Designed by Jon Freeman. / The members of the Starquest series are early examples of the Computer Role Playing Game form, modelled after their designer's successful Dunjonquest fantasy sequence but set in the same Future History as Starfleet Orion (1978). In the ...
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 ...