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 ...
Lamming, George
(1927-2022) Barbadian poet, journalist and author, five of his six novels being nonfantastic; he remains best-known for the first of these, In the Castle of my Skin (1953), the semi-autobiographical narration of a Barbadian childhood, which has remained extremely influential. Water With Berries (1971) conveys a sense of the intermixture of lives and modes of a contemporary Black activist with a vivid, quasi-allegorical sense that each of these lives is inherently ...
Pall Mall Magazine
UK general interest magazine owned (until 1912) by William Waldorf Astor (1848-1919), published monthly from May 1893 to December 1912 by George Routledge, and from January 1913 to August 1914 by Iliffe & Sons. It was acquired by William Randolph Hearst's National Magazine Company and saw one more issue in September 1914 before being merged with Nash's Magazine as Nash's and Pall Mall Magazine. Though it retained Pall Mall's volume numbering the magazine was generally ...
Child, Lincoln
(1957- ) US anthologist and author, whose earlier novels of sf interest were written in collaboration with Douglas Preston, either as by Lincoln Preston (for some UK releases) or more usually under both real names. Their venue tends to be a version of New York in which Horror-tinged sf conceits are told in an Urban Fantasy frame [for this term, plus Edifice and ...
Beliaev, Alexander
(1884-?1942) Russian author whose surname has been variously transliterated; further spellings include Beliayev, Belyaev and Belyayev. His death-date is likewise insecure: he died during the German occupation of the city of Pushkin and, while his body was discovered in January 1942, it is possible that he died in late 1941. As one of the originators of the sf genre in Soviet literature, Beliaev's Wells- and Verne-influenced writings ...
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 ...