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Saturday 8 February 2025
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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Sarrantonio, Al
(1952-2025) US editor and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Ahead of the Joneses" in Asimov's for March 1979. Much of his work was horror, sometimes tinged with sf (see Horror in SF), including his first novel, The Worms (1985), a Gothic tale set in Massachusetts with hints of H P Lovecraft; and the Equipoisal Moonbane ...
Cohen, Genghis
(? - ) Pseudonym of unidentified US author; the pseudonym is taken from Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), to which Cohen's one fantastic work, The Erotic Spectacles (1971) contains frequent references. The book concerns magical (though laboratory-produced) spectacles which uninhibit those viewed through them. [GS/JC]
Carroll, Jerry Jay
(? - ) US journalist and author, some of whose work verges on Horror in SF, like the Bogey series beginning with Top Dogs (1996), whose protagonist, magically transformed into a Dog, must decide between Faerie and Wall Street. Carroll is of interest primarily for Inhuman Beings (1998), in which seemingly paranoid suspicions that Aliens ...
Benson, A C
Working name for much of his copious magazine output of Arthur Christopher Benson (1862-1925), UK essayist, poet and author, elder brother of E F Benson and Robert Hugh Benson; best known as A C Benson though often his books would give this form of his name on the cover while the full name appeared on the title page; he also wrote as Arthur C Benson and as B. Much of his short fiction was fantasy, and can be found in ...
Suddaby, Donald
(1900-1964) UK author, mostly for children, whose first work was Scarlet-Dragon: A Little Chinese Phantasy (1923 chap), a seemingly self-published jeu d'esprit. He began publishing work of genre interest as Alan Griff with stories like "The Emerald" (August 1930 Colour), "The Coming of Glugm" (September 1930 Colour), which is Prehistoric SF, and "House of Desolation" (January 1934 Cornhill); his first sf novel was ...
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 ...