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Wednesday 1 May 2024
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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.
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Time Police
There are many fictional sf organizations whose brief is to regulate Time Travel and attempt to nullify dangerous Time Paradoxes or rewritings of history through Changewar. Inevitably the time police also work to guard their own existence. An early story in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, "Delenda Est" (December 1955 F&SF), ...
O'Donnell, Mark
(1954-2012) US playwright, librettist, humorist and author, much of his work in the mode of the goonish Satire exemplified by The Harvard Lampoon, to which he contributed as by Ibis, and The Hasty Pudding Theatricals group. He is perhaps best known for his work on the musical Hairspray (first performed 2002, Seattle, Washington). His work of sf interest tends to the skit-like, as in the title novella included in Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales ...
O'Leary, Con
(1888-1958) Irish-born author in whose sf novel, The Delicate Creature (1928), a woman is given a Drug that induces a range of Identity Transfer experiences, including life as a mouse, and as her own betrayed husband. [JC]
Hersey, John
(1914-1993) US author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, born to missionary parents in China where he lived until he was ten; he is perhaps best known for his early book-length essay on the first use of the atomic bomb in warfare, Hiroshima (31 August 1946 The New Yorker; 1946), probably the first text to qualify as a "non-fiction novel", and the most illustrious example of the form. The Child Buyer (1960), a Near-Future ...
Basilisks
The concept of pure information as a Weapon which adversely affects the mind or body is a recurring sf theme. Many authors have given this form of science-fictional spin to a notion grounded in Mythology, where the basilisk is an imaginary creature which (like Medusa and her sister Gorgons) can kill with a glance; and in Horror, where sights too dreadful to look upon are commonplace. One notable ...
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 ...