SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 6 December 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.
Site updated on 1 December 2025
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Stoppard, Tom
Working name of Czech-born playwright and screenwriter Tomáš Straussler (1937-2025), in the UK since 1946, the Stoppard surname being acquired from his stepfather when his widowed mother remarried in 1945. His early dramatic work was characterized by extravagant wit and wordplay, and an Absurdist application of logic to surreal or insane situations. Following the broadcast of several Radio plays, his ...
Yukimura Makoto
(1976- ) Japanese artist and author whose sole sf work to date gained him the premier accolade in Japanese Fandom, in two media. A drop-out from the Tama Art University in Tokyo, Yukimura became an art assistant to the Manga creator Shin Morimura before finding fame with his debut work Planetes (graph 2000-2004 Comic Morning; coll 2001-2004). Trading on gritty ...
Hughes, Edward P
(? - ) US author – it has been speculated that he may be Welsh – who began publishing sf with "In the Name of the Father" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for September 1980, the first tale in his Liam McGrath sequence, which was continued in his first novel, The Long Mynd (1985), set in a Post-Holocaust world brought into being by ...
SFWA Forum
Privy journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. One of the few publications – perhaps the only one – in the sf world restricted to a designated readership, SFWA Forum is circulated only to "active" and "associate" SFWA members (the terms "active" and "associate" being defined by the rules of that guild). Where the SFWA Bulletin, which is the official public journal of SFWA, maintains a strict ...
Mason, Colin
(1926-2020) New Zealand-born Australian journalist, politician – Senator for New South Wales 1977-1987 – and author whose Near Future sf novel, Hostage (23 July-3 August 1973 Melbourne Sun; 1973), sets the beginning of World War Three in Israel and its climax in Australia. The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe (2003; rev vt ...
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 ...