SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Wednesday 7 October 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 October 2026
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Edwards, Malcolm
(1949-2026) UK editor, critic and publisher, educated at Cambridge, where he graduated in anthropology. Active in UK sf Fandom in the 1970s and early 1980s, he published the first complete text of James Blish's "The Science in Science Fiction" (May 1951-May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly) in his Fanzine Quicksilver #2 in 1971; edited the ...
Young Einstein
Film (1988). Serious Productions. Produced and directed by Yahoo Serious. Written by Serious and David Roach. Cast includes John Howard, Odile Le Clezio and Serious. 91 minutes. Colour. / In an Alternate History 1905, Albert Einstein (Serious), a young Tasmanian apple farmer, discovers that E = mc2 (see Nuclear Energy), splits the beer atom, meets and is loved by ...
Voinovich, Vladimir
(1932-2018) Russian author known mostly for his mainstream Satires. Active in the 1970s, he found himself in confrontation with the Soviet authorities, and finally emigrated in the early 1980s to Germany. All his works display an offbeat and at times heavy-handed fantastication. His only sf tale, Moskva 2042 (1987; trans Richard Lourie as Moscow 2042 1987), carries a contemporary protagonist forward by ...
Alternate Cosmos
A Term used in this encyclopedia for the special case of Parallel World universes where the laws of Physics are and always have been importantly different; some sf stories posit this kind of radical change (or the threat of such change) to our own universe. George Gamow uses the device of dreams in Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (stories 1938-1939 Discovery; ...
Lethem, Jonathan
(1964- ) US author, married 1987-1998 to Shelley Jackson, who began publishing work of sf interest with "The Unexpurgated Zap Gun: A Report" for The Philip K Dick Society Newsletter #15 in 1987, the first of several pieces on Philip K Dick whose natural – though not inevitable – culmination was his editing for the Library of America three Dick omnibuses, beginning with ...
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 ...