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Friday 6 March 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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Grant, Rob
(1955-2026) UK author, initially best known under the collaborative pseudonym Grant Naylor for his work on the Red Dwarf (1988-current) Television series (which see for discussion). Only one related novel, Grant's solo Backwards (1996), has not been published under this name; as the title suggests, the central sf theme in Backwards is that of ...
Green, Joseph
(1931-2026) US author of sf and technical journalism who also worked for NASA, and who began publishing sf with "The Engineer" in New Worlds for February 1962. An Affair with Genius (coll 1969) assembles some of his better early work. Since 1989 he also published short fiction in Analog, F&SF and other magazines as by Francis Marion Soty. Although many of his 70-plus stories (not all sf) have ...
Simmons, Dan
(1948-2026) US elementary school teacher circa 1971-1987 and author, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The River Styx Runs Upstream" in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine for April 1982, and who was for some time thought of primarily as an author of tales of Horror, some of which – along with sf and Fantasy stories – were assembled ...
Frayn, Michael
(1933- ) UK journalist, playwright and author, best known for such work outside the sf field as the novel Towards the End of the Morning (1967; vt Against Entropy 1967), which despite its vt is not sf, and for Copenhagen (performed 1998; 2001), which examines the historical meeting during World War Two between Niels Bohr (1885-1962) and Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976). The Tin Men ...
Puerto Rico
As is well known, owing to the particular political situation of the island as a de facto colony of the United States, all Puerto Ricans hold US citizenship and, therefore, may live either on the island or on the mainland; some publish in Spanish and others in English. The latter is the case for Miami-born James Stevens-Arce, perhaps the first Puerto Rican to publish sf, and the most prolific. Stevens-Arce has dedicated his life to textual ...
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 ...