SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Thursday 20 August 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 17 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld (see Flat Earth) resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the ...
Fan Funds
Travel funds are a long-established tradition of Fandom, combining elements of Awards, charity (visiting the USA was once financially impossible for a typical UK fan), and cultural exchange programmes. Forrest J Ackerman proposed the Big Pond Fund with the aim of bringing John Carnell from Britain to the 1947 US Worldcon. Owing to ...
Alternate Cosmos
A Term used in this encyclopedia for the special case of Parallel World universes where the laws of Physics are and always have been importantly different; some sf stories posit this kind of radical change (or the threat of such change) to our own universe. George Gamow uses the device of dreams in Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (stories 1938-1939 Discovery; ...
Price, John-Allen
(1954- ) US author of two Near Future thrillers, Extinction Cruise (1987) and The Pursuit of the Phoenix (1990), the latter being set in near space and auguring the start of World War Three; The Apostle of Insanity Trilogy: Mutant Chronicles: Frenzy (1994), part of a series of Ties to a ...
Harper, Rory
(1950- ) US author who began publishing sf with "Psycho-Stars" in Asimov's for March 1980, and whose Petrogypsies (in Far Frontiers, anth 1985, ed John F Carr and Jerry Pournelle; exp 1989) is an essentially comic novel set in what seems to be an Alternate History where oil exploration is done by bio-constructs ...
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 ...