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Monday 13 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.
Site updated on 6 April 2026
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Fox, Janet
(1940-2009) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Say It With Spiders" for Weirdbook #3 in 1970, most of her many stories being fantasy or horror; a selection from this work has been assembled as Witch's Dozen (coll 2003). Of sf interest is the Sharecropped Scorpio sequence for the Byron Preiss enterprise: Scorpio, an insectoid Alien on the run from his ...
Hale, John
(1926-1997) UK film director, screenwriter, playwright and author who is of sf interest for The Paradise Man: A Black and White Farce (1969), a Near Future tale in which worldwide Future War is conducted between dominating Black nations and the rest, but according to agreements to maintain the conflict at the level necessary to keep the international economy in good health. He co-wrote the screenplay for The ...
Jarvis, Simon
(circa 1963- ) UK academic and poet who is of sf interest for Jerusalem Deleted (2015), a book-length narrative poem (see Poetry) set mostly in a Near Future Post-Holocaust Britain, as perceived during the Fantastic Voyage of its narrator through broken lands and Cities. An earlier work, ...
Oriel, Antrim
Pseudonym of Irish journalist and author William Arthur Moore (1880-1962), his nom de plume being taken from his county of birth. His Near Future Satire, The Miracle (1908), caricatures various politicians, mostly British, as Europe drifts in the direction of another War whose origins – presciently – he places in the geopolitical nightmare of the Balkans. [JC]
Phillips, Peter
(1920-2012) UK author and journalist, whose first published story was "No Silence for Maloeween" (May 1948 Weird Tales), and who was noted for a number of stories published during the decade 1948-1957 – especially "Dreams are Sacred" (September 1948 Astounding), regarded as one of the primary texts about dream worlds and psychic Virtual Reality. A man links minds with a writer in a coma and enters ...
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 ...