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Sunday 14 June 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.
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Duffy, Maureen
(1933-2026) UK author, active from around 1950, several of whose books focused on London, including Capital (1975), a complex set of era-switching meditations – including a Neanderthal man's thoughts about the future – on the deep mythos of the city. The novel influenced Michael Moorcock's Mother London (1988) (as the author acknowledged clearly), and similar later works by Iain ...
Ludwig, Edward W
(1920-1990) US editor and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Inheritance" in Imagination for October 1950, an sf adventure much like most of his twenty or so magazine stories, some of this material being assembled as The 7 Shapes of Solomon Bean and 14 Other Marvelous Stories of Science Fiction and Fantasy (coll 1983). The Mask of Jon Culon (1970) more ambitiously awakens its protagonist from ...
Brillhart, Ralph
(1924-2007). American artist. Although virtually nothing is known about this artist, there is a 2007 obituary for a Ralph Winton Brillhart of Great Neck, Long Island, identifying the man as a former Marine and "commercial illustrator", and one can reasonably assume that he was the Ralph Brillhart who painted a number of sf book covers for New York publishers during the 1960s and early 1980s. During the first phase of his career, Brillhart sometimes employed a realistic style that could appear ...
Fieux de Mouhy, Charles de
(1701-1784) French journalist, playwright and author, whose name has also been given as Charles de Fieux, Chevalier de Mouhy, and whose surname has been variously registered as de Fieux de Mouhy, de Mouhy, Fieux, le Chevalier de Mouhy, or Mouhy. He is of Proto SF interest for Lamekis [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1737 4vols; trans Michael Shreve 2011), a complex tale involving Fantastic Voyages, with ...
MF DOOM
(1971-2020) The most widely used and best-known pseudonym (always styled in all capitals) of UK-born rapper Dumile Thompson, in the US from childhood, and a enduring influence on underground hip-hop. His mask-wearing stage persona derived from the Marvel Comics character Victor Von Doom (Doctor Doom), upon whom he based another of his pseudonyms, Viktor Vaughn. It was under this name that he recorded his sf album, Vaudeville Villain (2003), ...
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 ...