SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 15 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 13 January 2025
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Didier de Chousy, Comte
(1834-1895) French nobleman and author of Ignis (1883 anonymous; rev 1884 as by Le Cte Didier de Chousy), an exorbitant Scientific Romance whose use of Hollow Earth topoi seems to have been drawn from Jules Verne's Voyage au centre de la Terre (1864; first trans as Journey to the Centre of the Earth 1867), but whose affinity to ...
Proctor, Frederick J
(? -? ) UK author of a Lost Race tale, The Secret of Mark Pepys (1899), set in the mountains of California, where Toltec descendants have created a secret civilization, with a queen. [JC]
Assael, Samuel
(1920-1998) UK publisher, senior partner at John Spencer and Co, best known for its Badger Books imprint. With his fellow-publisher Maurice Nahum, Assael edited the four 1950s Spencer magazines given separate entries in this encyclopedia: Futuristic Science Stories (1950-1954) under the pseudonym John S Manning; Tales of Tomorrow (1950-1954) uncredited – of which Nahum ...
Fear, W H
(1921-1989) Author, presumed to be British, who is known only for five early contributions to the numbered sequence of sf novels published by John Spencer and Co under the Badger Books imprint. The last of these, The Quest of the Seeker (1958), appeared under the House Name James Elton. [DRL/SH]
Carcosa
1. Carcosa House was a fan-run US specialist publishing house formed to produce the first book edition of Edison's Conquest of Mars (1947) by Garrett P Serviss. No further books appeared. / 2. The name Carcosa (not Carcosa House) was used for a different Small Press founded in 1973 under the direction of David Drake and Karl Edward ...
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 ...