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Thursday 17 September 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.
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Almond, David
(1951- ) UK author, much of his work being nonfantastic, though illuminated by hints that the seemingly ordinary world cannot be fully understood in mundane terms; most of his early work was written for a Young Adult readership; some later titles have been released in both young adult and adult formats. His first stories were assembled as Sleepless Nights (coll 1985) and A Kind of Heaven (coll 1997); his first ...
Hoffmann, Franz
(1814-1882) German editor, translator and author, much of his copious output being designed for children and Young Adult readers. Most of this work is non-fantastic, though the first novella assembled in Der kleine Robinson; Der Blinde Knabe ["The Little Robinson"/"The Blind Boy"] (coll 1850), which plagiarizes Johann David Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson (1812-1813), ...
Tregillis, Ian
(1973- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Tin Man's Lament" in Inside Straight (anth 2008) edited by George R R Martin, a Wild Cards Braid; he is best known for his complicatedly Equipoisal Milkweed Triptych, starting with Bitter Seeds (2010), set in an ...
Levett, Arthur
(? -? ) UK author of A Martian Examines Christianity (1934), a disquisition in the form of a novel: a visitor from Mars lands on Earth in his Spaceship and discusses Religion until the book ends. [JC]
Charyn, Jerome
(1937- ) US author who was born and educated in New York, which city he gradually transformed in his fiction into a Magic-Realist venue whose mythopoeic resonances and exorbitant happenings hover (see Equipoise) at the edge of generic displacements (and beyond), and strongly prefigure the fabulated New York of writers like John Crowley, Mark ...
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 ...