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Saturday 11 April 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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Piller, Emanuel S
(1907-1985) US author, US editor, journalist and author, with Leonard Engel, of one of the very first Cold War Future War novels, The World Aflame: The Russian-American War of 1950 (1947), in which America's control of the air – and use of that preponderance in a nuclear first strike – proves insufficient to crush Russia, nor does a subsequent use of ...
Carnacki
Thomas Carnacki is an early fictional Occult Detective [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], who, unlike most such investigators, uses scientific means to investigate hauntings. He was created by William Hope Hodgson with five Club Stories that ran in The Idler in 1910, plus a sixth in New Magazine in ...
Estleman, Loren D
(1952- ) US author of detective fiction and Westerns who began publishing at book length in 1976. His early novels include the fantastic Sherlock Holmes adventures Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula; or, The Adventures of the Sanguinary Count (1978) (see Vampires) and Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes (1979), both purportedly by "John H Watson, MD, as edited by Loren ...
Holden, Inez
(1903-1974) UK journalist and author, active from the early 1920s; around 1940, briefly George Orwell's partner. In 1941 she rented a garage flat from H G Wells, who evicted her when she introduced him to Orwell, soon after the publication of the latter's "Wells, Hitler and the World State" (August 1941 Horizon). She is of sf interest for Born Old, Died Young (1932), a ...
Smith, Kathryn
(1971- ) Canadian author who also writes as by Kady Cross, Kate Cross and Kate Locke, each name being attached to a separate subgenre for marketing purposes. Kathryn Smith has focused on paranormal romances, specifically the Brotherhood of the Blood and Nightmare Chronicles series; Kady Cross on Steampunk romances for the Young Adult market, specifically the Steampunk Chronicles beginning ...
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 ...