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Friday 13 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.
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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 ...
Star Saga
Videogame series (from 1987). MasterPlay. Designed by Andrew Greenberg, Rick Dutton, Walter Freitag, Michael Massimilla. / Star Saga is a series of paragraph-system Board Games, in the manner of Tales of the Arabian Nights (see Board Games), which are distinguished by the use of computer software to perform the necessary housekeeping tasks (an approach resembling that employed ...
Kennealy, Patricia
Working name of US rock critic and author whose birth name was Patricia Kennely (1946-2021), until 1994 when she began to write as Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, taking this (without the hyphen) as her legal name some considerable time after her 1970 marriage in a Celtic handfasting ceremony to the rock singer Jim Morrison (1943-1971) of The Doors; she appeared in a cameo role in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991). Her sf oscillated – in a manner common to much 1980s ...
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 ...
Future Fire, The
UK-based but otherwise international downloadable Online Magazine edited by Djibril Alayad. It published 21 issues from January 2005 to June 2010 and resumed publication in February 2012 after an eighteen-month hiatus. It originally proclaimed itself "New Writing in Speculative Fiction and Dark Fantasy", though most issues usually carried only one or two stories and the emphasis was on reviews, critical essays and Interviews. ...
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 ...