SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 8 September 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 7 September 2026
Sponsor of the day: The Telluride Institute
Visiteurs, Les
French film (1993; vt The Visitors). Gaumont. Directed by Jean-Marie Poiré. Written by Jean-Marie Poiré and Christian Clavier. Cast includes Christian Bujeau, Marie-Anne Chazel, Christian Clavier, Valérie Lemercier, Isabelle Nanty and Jean Reno. 107 minutes. Colour. / In 1123, Count Godefroy de Montmirail (Reno) is promised to be married to Frénégonde de Pouilles (Lemercier), a duke's daughter. A witch he has ...
French, Whitney
(1987- ) Canadian editor and poet whose verse novel, Syncopation: A Novel in Verse (2026), posits an exorbitantly various Near Future world some time after the "Memory Wars" – in conjunction with a semi-permanent earthquake whose effects are intensified by Climate Change – have transfigured human life on the planet, with an individual's access to and ...
Button, John
(? -? ) US author, sometimes referred to as Dr John Button. He is noted for ghostwriting five novels in the Hardy Boys series of juvenile adventures, attributed (like all others in the series) to Franklin W Dixon; everyone familiar with the series agrees that his work was inferior to that of his predecessor (and successor), the much-admired Leslie McFarlane (1902-1977), whose contributions to the series were ...
Smith, Curtis C
(1939- ) US critic and bibliographer, most of whose work in the first category has focused upon two authors: Olaf Stapledon, beginning with essays like "William Olaf Stapledon: Saint and Revolutionary" for Extrapolation in 1971, and culminating in Olaf Stapledon: A Bibliography (1984) with Harvey J Satty; and upon Mack Reynolds, culminating in ...
Sci Fiction
US Online Magazine or, perhaps more accurately, the fiction section of the Sci Fi Channel (see Television) website SciFi.com and not a separate magazine in its own right. Sci Fiction was edited by Ellen Datlow and featured a new story each week, plus sometimes an additional reprint story. It ran from 19 May 2000 to 28 December 2005. / Datlow's track record as fiction editor at ...
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 ...