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Monday 27 June 2022
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.
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Langford, George
(1876-1964) US industrialist, amateur palaeontologist and author of several Prehistoric SF tales for juvenile readers (see Children's SF), beginning with the two Pic the Weapon-Maker tales, Pic the Weapon-Maker (1920) and Kutnar, Son of Pic (1921), set 25,000 years ago and featuring what may be Telepathic rapport with mammoths; Senrac, the Lion Man: Adventures of a Boy in the Stone Age (1954) touches fairly closely upon some Tarzan tropes in its depiction of the raising of a feral human boy and ...
AI
The common acronym for Artificial Intelligence, an item of Terminology used increasingly often in information science, and hence in sf, since the late 1970s. Most writers would agree that for a Computer or other Machine of some sort to qualify as an AI it must be self-aware. There are as yet none such in the real world. Controversy continues regarding the feasibility of "strong AI", the creation of artificial intelligence comparable to a human's. / Early sf visions of AI tended to assume ...
Kelly, John
(? -? ) South African author of a Future War tale, The Coming Revolt of the Transvaal (1891 chap), in which England invades South Africa in 1894. [JC]
West, Morris
(1916-1999) Australian author, in his early years a lay monk, and best known for novels like The Devil's Advocate (1959). The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963), filmed as The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), features the election of a Russian Pope at a point when World War Three threatens to erupt; in The Navigator (1976) a lost Island is found in the South Pacific, and a Utopian community is founded there; The Clowns of God (1981), a Near Future tale set at the end of the twentieth century, deals ...
MacHarg, William
(1872-1951) US author, of sf interest for The Achievements of Luther Trant (coll of linked stories 1910) with Edwin Balmer, who was his brother-in-law (see his entry for details). [JC]
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 and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...