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Thursday 12 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 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Calculator
Film (2014 Russia; original title: Vichislitel; vt Titanium France; vt Titanium Strafplanet XT-59 Germany). Unified Media Group. Directed by Dmitriy Grachev. Written by Aleksandr Gromov, Dmitriy Grachev. Cast includes Anna Chipovskaya, Vinnie Jones, Evegniy Mironov. 82 minutes. Colour. / A thousand years after mankind spread out among the stars, luckless humans on the inhospitable planet XT-59 cling to life in a single Dystopian ...
Intelligence
Intelligence is necessarily one of the issues discussed in the entries on Aliens, Anti-Intellectualism in SF, Cybernetics, Mutants and Superman. Machine intelligence is discussed under Computers and Robots; for amplification of human ...
Méry, Joseph
(1798-1866) French playwright and author, whose Proto SF tale, "Histoire de ce qui n'est pas arrivé" ["A History That did not Happen"] (1854; in Histoire de ce qui n'est pas arrivé; La Tamise; Le Diamant aux mille facettes coll 1859) is an early Alternate History, in which Napoleon's life – and the future of Europe – is transformed when he gains an unexpected victory in Egypt in 1799 and ...
de Chair, Somerset
(1911-1995) UK Conservative politician, first elected to Parliament in 1934; his career ended in 1950 after a succession of (heterosexual) scandals. At the start of his long writing career, he published two tracts, The Impending Storm (1930), which predicted World War Two, and Divided Europe (1931), which predicted a Communist takeover of Eastern Europe; Peter Public: A Play in Three Acts (1932) as by the Hon Member ...
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 ...