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Wednesday 14 May 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.
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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Whitmarsh, H Phelps
(1863-1935) Canadian-born journalist and author, in Australia and USA before moving to the Philippines in 1899; he is of sf interest for The Golden Talisman (1899), a Lost Race tale set within a frame of mountains deep within Asia, where the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Kaffiria suffer from a lack of sweet-smelling flora. [JC]
Caldwell, Taylor
(1900-1985) UK-born author, in US from childhood, who concentrated on extremely successful suspense-filled family sagas. Her first sf novel, The Devil's Advocate (1952), though set in 1970, is effectively a right-wing denunciation of the New Deal of the 1930s, whose welfare policies (it suggests) have made an oppressive Dystopia inevitable; fortunately, rebels known as the Minute Men are destined to save the day. Her second effort, ...
Feldstein, Al
(1925-2014) US Comics artist, writer and editor who worked for EC Comics from 1948 to 1956, initially as an artist but later in all three capacities. From 1950 to 1953 he edited, often wrote and sometimes drew the EC sf Anthology comic Weird Science (which see), also working on several other EC "New Trend" titles, all cancelled in 1955, and their "New Direction" and ...
Kariya Tetsu
(1941- ) Chinese-born Japanese comics writer, in Australia since 1988, whose early works were chiefly muscular men's Manga featuring gangland violence and histrionic struggles for power. Among these, there is little of genre interest save perhaps Otoko Ōzora ["Man Big Sky"] (1980-1982 Shōnen Sunday) which, in importing Wuxia tropes to the Japanese mainland, flirts with ...
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 ...