SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 9 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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Gavin, Jamila
(1941- ) Indian-born children's author in UK from the early 1950s, prolific in several genres since she began publishing in 1979. Of sf interest are Ali and the Robots (1986), a not particularly challenging tale involving Robots, and the more ambitious The Wormholers (1996), an Alternate Cosmos tale. [JC]
Kelleghan, Fiona
(1965- ) US academic whose birth name was Ellen Feehan. She worked as a tenured professor and librarian at the University of Miami until her retirement in 2011, and was in a long-term relationship with sf author Tim Sullivan which ended in 2018. She published one genre story – "The Secret in the Chest" in Realms of Fantasy for October 1998 – and edited the sf reprint ...
Bérard, Cyprien
(? -? ) French journalist and author of whom little is known, beyond his opportunistic rehash of John Polidori' s The Vampyre (1819), initially thought to have been written by Lord Byron, the real life model who most resembled its protagonist, and the fact that he has sometimes been confused with Charles Nodier. Lord Ruthwen ou Les Vampires ...
Clarke, J Brian
(1928-2022) UK-born Canadian author, a fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, who began publishing sf with "Artifact" in Analog for June 1969. The nine stories in the Expediter sequence, beginning with "The Expediter" (February 1984 Analog), have been more influential, and culminate in The Expediter (fixup 1990), which assimilates some of the earlier material in an overview presentation of an exceedingly ...
Forward, Robert L
(1932-2002) US physicist and author, senior scientist at Hughes Research Laboratories and one of the most devoted Hard-SF authors of the 1980s; married to Martha Dodson Forward, father of Julie Forward Fuller (with whom he has collaborated on sf) and supernatural fiction author Robert Dodson Forward (1958- ). He began publishing sf with "The Singing Diamond" in Omni for ...
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 ...