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Friday 10 July 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 July 2026
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Telekinesis
An important item of sf Terminology, from the Greek words for "movement at a distance". Thus telekinesis is the ability to move objects by the power of the mind, which after Telepathy is the most commonly used Psi Power in sf. The word was not coined by an sf author: the Oxford English Dictionary gives an 1890 citation from Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. It appeared in ...
Jackson, Greg [2]
(1983- ) US author, active from around 2010. Some of the tales assembled in Prodigals (coll 2016) occupy the water margins of Fantastika; his first novel, The Dimensions of a Cave (2023), set in the very Near Future, follows a journalist's investigation of a secret government project that has generated an AI capable of creating a ...
Hoyle, Fred
(1915-2001) UK astronomer and author, famed in the former capacity for his maverick views on many subjects, including a long-held advocacy of the Steady State Universe theory that the Universe had been in a state of constant creation for ever (see Continuous Creation), a concept replaced after much acrimony by the universally preferred Big Bang theory advocated by George Gamow and others (Hoyle in fact coined the term ...
Adrian, Jack
Pseudonym of UK editor and author Christopher Lowder (1945- ) who wrote several sf and fantasy Comic strips and stories for boys' comics and papers in the 1970s and early 1980s while working for IPC/Fleetway. These include the controversial "Kids Rule OK" for Action (see Boys' Papers), "Adam Eterno" for Thunder and Lion, "Van Helsing" for The House of Hammer, "Timequake" and ...
Morphett, Tony
(1938-2018) Australian screenwriter and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Litterbug" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from July 1969, and who co-wrote The Last Wave (1977), co-written and directed by Peter Weir, whose last image – of a vast wave from the deeps of the ocean about to flood Australia – has become famous. Morphett's books of ...
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 ...