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Saturday 12 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2025
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Low, A M
(1888-1956) UK academic, engineer, inventor and author, president of the British Interplanetary Society for a period; for much of his career he addressed himself and was addressed as "Professor", but without a position to justify the use. During his service in World War One in 1917, he was partially responsible for the Invention of a flying bomb, though it seems never to have been used (he claimed it was essentially identical to a ...
Taylor, Robert Lewis
(1912-1998) US author, often of Humour, best known for the nonfantastic The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1959), which won a Pulitzer Price; in his sf novel, Adrift in a Boneyard (1947), the few survivors of a mysterious Disaster come, after long travel through the ruins of New York in the mode of the Last Man tale, to a peaceful ...
Sladen, Douglas
(1856-1947) UK academic, poet, editor and author, in Australia 1879-1884, in UK subsequently. Much of his academic and creative life reflected his years in Australia; his anthologies of Australian poetry were influential, and his long advocacy of the poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870) generated studies, editions, and his only sustained sf novel, Fair Inez: A Romance of Australia (1918), set in the Utopian Australia of 2000-2007 CE, and featuring ...
Potter, J K
(1956- ) Working name of American artist Jeffrey Knight Potter; some works are signed Jeff K Potter. Although born in California, he has lived most of his life in the American South, a region which he reports has had a major impact on his extravagantly outré artwork. After contributing to fanzines, Potter began his career by doing covers for small press publications (see Small Presses and Limited Editions), ...
deFord, Miriam Allen
(1888-1975) US author, editor and feminist, who was active as a journalist and editor from 1912; married to the distinguished nonfiction author Maynard Shipley (1872-1934) from 1921; she worked as a researcher for Charles Fort between 1922 and his death in 1932; she was the San Francisco correspondent for the socialist Federated Press from 1921 to 1956, and a contributing editor to The Humanist. For the educational publisher Haldeman-Julius she wrote ...
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 ...