SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Friday 14 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.
Site updated on 10 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: David Cowhig
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 resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
All Top Comics
US Comic (1944; 1946-1949). Fox Publications, Inc. Artists include Matt Baker, Ellis Chambers and Jack Kamen. Script writers include Pat Adams and Jack Kamen. 20 issues. Initially published in 1944, All Top Comics was one of several single-issue 132-page comics published by Fox at this time; others included The Book of Comics, All Good Comics, All Your Comics (all 1944) and ...
Videogame
Historically, games intended for use on personal computers, mainframes and minicomputers were often referred to as computer games, while their equivalents on home consoles and coin operated arcade cabinets have from their first appearance in the early 1970s been known as TV games or video games. This distinction, however, became increasingly blurred after the mid 1990s, as the same games were made available on both personal computers and consoles. Since the alternative designations occasionally ...
Smullyan, Raymond
(1919-2017) US mathematician, philosopher and author, professor of philosophy at the City University of New York and Indiana University. His popular non-academic works include many collections of ingenious logical puzzles, often – as in similar writings by Martin Gardner, Douglas Hofstadter and Ian Stewart – spiced with Fantastika. Thus the ...
AD Police Files
Japanese Original Video Animation (1990). Artmic, AIC. Directed by Takamasa Ikegami and Akira Nishimori. Written by Takehito Nakazawa and Kaoru Mizutani. Voice cast includes Toshio Furukawa, Youko Matsuoka, Miina Tominaga and Norio Wakamoto. Three 27-minute episodes. Colour. / This was a spin-off from Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991), set a few years earlier in 2027 (see Near Future). ...
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 ...