SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 15 July 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 14 July 2025
Sponsor of the day: Stuart Hopen
If
US Digest-size magazine. 175 issues March 1952 to November/December 1974. It was founded by James L Quinn's Quinn Publishing Co. with Paul W Fairman as editor, but Fairman, who had been writing profusely for the Ziff-Davis Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures developed If as a copy of those magazines. Sales were poor and ...
Beware! Terror Tales
US Comic (1952-1953). 8 issues. Fawcett Publications Inc. Artists include Bernard Baily, Maurice Gutwirth, Bob McCarthy and Sheldon Moldoff. Script writers include John Martin and Bill Woolfolk. Harry Harrison drew at least one story, whilst Otto Binder (as Eando Binder) wrote the text story for #2 (neither were sf). 36 pages: #1-#4 and #8 had three strips, with #5-#7 having four strips; all had a ...
Hurley, Richard J
(? - ) US editor of works mainly aimed at the Young Adult markets. His reprint Anthology Beyond Belief (anth 1966) capably assembles mostly familiar stories by such well-known authors as Isaac Asimov, Clark Ashton Smith and Theodore Sturgeon. [GSt]
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur
(1863-1944) UK poet, anthologist, academic and author, active as a poet (see Poetry) from the early 1880s, and as an author of novels and tales, many at least partly set in his native Cornwall, from the publication of his first full-length story, Dead Man's Rock: A Romance (1887) as by Q, which revolves around the cursed Great Ruby of Ceylon; for many years he continued to write as by Q, sometimes appending his full name, and as A T Quiller-Couch. ...
Live Action Role Playing
Term used to describe a form of Role Playing Game in which players physically act out their parts, as opposed to speaking them in the manner of a radio drama. An actual environment (for example, a castle or a city) is used to stand in for the game's fictional setting. Two main forms exist: those in which physical actions such as combat are enacted using padded weapons and similar devices, and those in which a set of symbolic rules (or simply the judgement ...
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 ...