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Saturday 7 February 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 6 February 2026
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Malachronism
See the historical note at the end of this entry. / Without attempting a comprehensive Definition of SF, one may safely say that most sf stories and novels present an imaginary record of the human condition at some future time and, further, that the events recorded are usually of an epic dimension, either overtly or by implication. That is, that even when the protagonists are not of heroic stature they inhabit a landscape differing from our own ...
Coxwell, Henry
(1819-1900) UK balloonist, editor and author; working under the name Henry Wells he was founder and editor of The Balloonist; Or, Aerostatic Magazine in 1845, which lasted only until 1847. His interest in piloting Balloons extended, through at least one dangerous crash, until his retirement from flying in 1885. Of some sf interest is A Knight of the Air; Or, the Aereal Rivals (1895) in which flight is achieved, not through an advanced ...
Rowland, Donald S
(1928-2022) UK author of a very large number of pseudonymous works, mostly with Robert Hale Limited; those used for sf titles include Fenton Brockley, Roger Carlton, Graham Garner, Alex Random, Roland Starr and Mark Suffling. For that firm (or for the highly similar house of Gresham) his Space Operas under his own name begin with Despot in Space (1973), which with Master of Space (1974) forms ...
Bradley, Kaliane
(1988- ) UK editor and author in whose first novel, The Ministry of Time (2024), the extraction of living historical figures via Time Travel has become possible. Commander Graham Gore (1809-1847), an historical officer attached to the doomed Franklin Expedition to the Arctic in search of a Northwest Passage (see Imperialism), has been reawoken in a 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 ...