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Friday 24 March 2023
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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Brown, Eric
(1960-2023) UK author who began publishing sf – after a children's play, Noel's Ark (1982 chap) – with "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation" for Interzone in Autumn 1987; like several further tales assembled in The Time-Lapsed Man and Other Stories (coll 1990), it is set in a future world dominated by the effects of bio-engineering and dense with information. This marriage of Cordwainer ...
Spencer, Leonard G
Ziff-Davis House Name used at least twice by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett in collaboration, for the stories "The Beast With 7 Tails" (August 1956 Amazing) and "The Girl from Bodies, Inc." (October 1956 Fantastic). A third Spencer story, "The Man with the X-Ray Eyes" (February 1957 ...
Ferrigno, Robert
(1947- ) US author, most of whose novels have been thrillers, beginning with The Horse Latitudes (1990). He began to publish work of sf interest with "Perfect Lover" in Beyond #17 in 1990. The sf Assassin trilogy, beginning with Prayers for the Assassin (2006), is set in the Near Future America of 2040, whose balkanization has been triggered by terror attacks which have destroyed ...
Britton, Lionel
(1887-1971) UK author and playwright, a conscientious objector during World War One who gained some prominence in the interwar period for Hunger and Love, Etc (1931), a speculative proletarian/modernist Dystopia, written before (and influential upon) but published after Brain: A Play of the Whole Earth (1930), a drama in which a giant Computer is set up in the Sahara to ...
Spore
Videogame (2008). Maxis. Designed by Will Wright. Platforms: Mac, Win. / The Panspermia theory formulated by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Svante Arrhenius hypothesizes that life is spread throughout the universe by drifting seeds, or spores. The game of Spore begins with a single cell, deposited in the ocean of an unknown planet by a convenient meteor; the player's goal is to ...
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 ...