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Wednesday 18 February 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 16 February 2026
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Shelley, Percy Bysshe
(1792-1822) UK playwright, poet and author whose importance to the development of science fiction (see Proto SF) in the early nineteenth century is tangential to the main drift of his work as a poet; he was, along with Lord Byron and John Keats (1795-1821), one of the central figures of the second wave of British Romantic poetry. It is an aetherialized version of this whitewashed figure whose ...
Fancyclopedia
Fandom has generated many reference works about itself, early examples typically being directories and mailing lists of currently active fans. The grandiose-sounding Fancyclopedia project has, like the present SFE, seen two distinct print editions followed by a third and still current manifestation online. / The first Fancyclopedia (1944) began as an N3F project and was edited by Jack ...
Byoreseo on Geudae
["You Who Came From the Stars"] South Korean Television series (2013-2014; vt My Love from the Star). SBS. Directed by Jang Tae-yu. Written by Park Ji-eun. Cast includes Park Hae-jin, Yoo In-na, Jun Ji-hyun and Kim Soo-hyun. 21 episodes. Colour. / Crashlanding on Earth in the year 1609, the Alien Do Min-joon waits in vain for a means of escaping. With a human form that is permanently ...
Quantum Computers
A still largely theoretical but eagerly researched breed of Computers which use quantum superposition to deal simultaneously with all possible values which can be represented as "qubits" (quantum bits, as opposed to conventional computer bits representing 0 or 1) in a quantum register. Experimental devices with small numbers of qubits have been tested; if workable on a larger scale, the technology should be capable of processing speeds vastly greater than normal ...
Nadler, Stuart
(? - ) US author whose third novel, Rooms for Vanishing (2025), partially unpacks the complexities of grief and bereavement of a Jewish family, some of whom are Holocaust survivors (see Holocaust Fiction), through a central device from the megatext of Fantastika: the ghosts haunting various characters can be understood as figures of substantial being from more than one ...
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 ...