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Thursday 20 August 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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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld (see Flat Earth) resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the ...
Emmerton, Anton
(? - ) US author of two Near Future adventure thrillers, Blood Red Sky (1985), which involves a secret weapon, and High Command (1986), in which Britain has been taken over by the USSR; Ghost Pilot (1987) is a World War Two ghost story involving a revenant pilot. [JC]
Psychohistory
A much-loved item of sf Terminology, coined in Isaac Asimov's very popular sequence Foundation (May 1942-January 1950 Astounding; fixups 1951-1953); it should not be confused with the identical term sometimes used by historians, which refers to the study of the relation of psychological motives to historical process. The attractive but purely ...
Buland, Trond
(1958- ) Norwegian scientist dr.polit. (Phd in sociology) and sf author, belonging to a generation of new voices emerging in the 1980s. He began to publish work of genre interest with the title story of the Norwegian Original Anthology Siste reis ["The Last Journey"] (anth 1982) edited by Terje Wanberg (1939-2006), followed by "Carita" in the original anthology Asterveg ["The Road to ...
Vanewords, John Pre
(? -? ) UK author of The Great Miracle; Or The Man Who Could Not Be Killed [for full subtitle see Checklist] (1914) describes the career of a kind of Superman, whose invulnerability and ability to pass through walls comes from a Magic spell, and who becomes a moderately sympathetic Antihero in his defiance of civilization. [JC]
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 ...