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Wednesday 11 March 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 9 March 2026
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Crump, C G
(1862-1935) UK editor, archivist and author whose sf novel, The Red King Dreams, 1946-1948 (1931), is a ponderously demure Satire of the university life of the Near Future. Though the tale is Oxonian in flavour, the novel is set at "The University of Weston Poggs". [JC]
McArthur, Maxine
(1962- ) Australian author who began publishing sf with the first volume of her Commander Halley sequence, Time Future (1999), which won the 1999 George Turner Award. It is an effective contribution to the growing array of sf novels in which the ambivalent history of colonialism on Earth is not transferred into narratives of Colonization of Other Worlds – a swerve typical of sf written from a ...
Pereira Mendes, H
(1852-1937) UK-born rabbi, academic and author, in the USA from 1877, where he wrote prolifically in many genres. Looking Ahead: Twentieth Century Happenings (1899) tells of various socialist upheavals, beginning in the Near Future and moving forward, which lead to several world wars and are defeated, in the end, only by an alliance of theocratical Christians and Jews, which also establishes in Palestine a Jewish homeland ruled by a descendant of ...
Dumas, Alexandre
(1802-1870) French playwright and author, best remembered outside of France for romantic historical fictions, most famously the Musketeers sequence beginning with Les Trois Mousquetaires (March-July 1844 Le Siécle; 1844 8vols; trans William Barrow as The Three Musketeers; Or, the Feats and Fortunes of a Gascon Adventurer 1846), whose influence as a model for tale of adventure shared among companions is pervasive, and which directly influenced ...
Edgar, Alfred
Working name of UK playwright and author Alfred Edgar Frederick Higgs (1896-1972), eventually resident in the USA, whose work for Boys' Papers included at least two sf novels of moderate interest. The young protagonists of Invaders from Mars (1931 chap) travel to Mars and return post-haste to Earth to warn of the Martians' planned Invasion. In The Insect Men (1936), four school ...
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 ...