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Thursday 10 July 2025
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 7 July 2025
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French, Sean
(1959- ) UK author, most of whose work has been in collaboration with his wife Nicci Gerard (1958- ), writing together as by Nicci French; most of their fiction consists of nonfantastic psychological thrillers. The Imaginary Monkey (1993) by French solo edges into the latticework of Fantastika through the transformation of its protagonist into a monkey (see ...
Schafer, Steve
(? - ) US author whose first novel, The Border (2017), is a non-fantastic Young-Adult thriller set along the Mexican-American border; he is of sf interest for his second novel, eMortal (2024), whose brilliant young-adult protagonist upcodes an AI-powered Android into something like Superman. He is also ...
Dickson, Lovat
(1902-1987) Australian-born publisher and author, in Canada or UK most of his life, half-brother of Gordon R Dickson; discovered and published Grey Owl (1888-1938), a Canadian-Indian sage famously unmasked after his death as a Scotsman named Archie Belaney; Dickson later wrote an interesting critical biography of H G Wells, H G Wells: His Turbulent Life and Times (1969). [JC]
Hodgart, Matthew
(1916-1996) UK academic, Professor of English at Sussex University from 1964. His continuation of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726; rev 1735), A New Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms [for subtitle see Checklist] (1969 chap), is a Satire on the 1960s upheavals in higher education in the UK. [JC] see also: Gulliver. /
Chen Qiufan
(1981- ) Chinese author, born in the southern province of Guangdong, hence the Cantonese-influenced vowel-shift in his "English" name, Stanley Chan. He graduated with a double honours in Chinese and Film from Beijing University, before finding employment with Google. His fiction often revolves around issues in Perception, such as "Fen" (May 2004 Kehuan Shijie; trans Chen Qiufan as ...
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 ...