SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Saturday 14 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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Weird Tales
Legendary US weird-fiction magazine which originally ran for 31 years and has since had a number of revivals in a variety of forms, which are subdivided below starting with the original magazine. / 1. US magazine, 279 issues March 1923 to September 1954, published initially in Chicago by Rural Publishing Corporation March 1923 to May/July 1924 and Popular Fiction Company November 1924 to October 1938; then relocated to New York with Short Stories Inc November 1938 to September 1954; ...
Lang, King
A House Name used by Curtis Warren on a number of sf novels: five by David Griffiths and one each by George Hay, Brian Holloway, John William Jennison and E C Tubb. See Checklist below. [JC]
Darwin, Erasmus
(1731-1802) UK physician, philosopher, inventor and poet; grandfather of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and of Francis Galton. Though he was noted as an inventor of devices (both built and theoretical) from water pumps to speaking machines to a mechanical bird (see Inventions), and though his work as an advocate of the sexual classificatory system of Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) (see Biology) was of ...
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Film (1973). Apjac/Twentieth Century Fox. Director J Lee Thompson. Written by John William Corrington, Joyce Hooper Corrington, based on a story by Paul Dehn. Cast includes Claude Akins, Lew Ayres, John Huston, Roddy McDowall and Natalie Trundy. USA 93 minutes, UK 86 minutes. Colour. / The fifth and last of the series beginning with Planet of the Apes (to which this is a "prequel") and the most disappointing. ...
de Lancie, John
(1948- ) US television actor in many roles since 1976, probably best known for playing Q in nine episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation between 1987 and 1994, a role at the centre of his Star Trek: The Next Generation Tie, Star Trek: The Next Generation: I, Q (1999) with Peter David. He also wrote a ...
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...