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Saturday 11 April 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.
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Litt, Toby
(1968- ) UK author, mostly of nonfantastic work, though some of the stories assembled in Adventures in Capitalism (coll 1996) apply metafictional estrangements (see Postmodernism and SF) to a world clearly porous to manipulation (see Media Landscape), including the presence of an Avatar of Michel Foucault (1926-1984) in "When I Met Michel Foucault". ...
Fuller, Sam
(1912-1997) US screenwriter, director and author, variously active from the mid 1930s, most famous for his thirty films as director beginning with I Shot Jesse James (1947). He is of sf interest for his second novel, Test Tube Baby (1936), whose protagonist, a scientific prodigy, may have devised an experiment which successfully creates life in a test tube. But his life divides into two incompatible parts, the scientist and the lover; so violent are the transitions ...
Bartlett, Claire
(? - ) UK author of several Radio plays and Ties to the Doctor Who franchise, usually in collaboration with Iain McLaughlin; she began to publish work of genre interest with "The Time Lord's Story" (with McLaughlin) in Doctor Who: Short Trips: Repercussions (anth 2004) edited by Gary Russell. ...
Pines, Ned L
(1905-1990) US magazine and book publisher who in 1931 founded a group of magazines with Thrilling in the title: Thrilling Detective, Thrilling Love, etc. These became part of the Pines Publications group (which Pines served as president 1929-1961), whose associated companies included Standard Comics, Standard Magazines, Beacon Magazines and Better Publications. In 1936 Pines bought Gernsback's Wonder Stories and retitled it ...
Anderson, Colin
(1933- ) UK author whose novel Magellan (1970) depicts a Post-Holocaust Earth dominated by a single city, in which a welfare state tyranny holds sway; and the somewhat metaphysical apotheosis afforded its inhabitants. [JC] see also: Cities. /
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 ...