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Wednesday 16 July 2025
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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Long, Frank Belknap
(1901-1994) US editor author of sf and fantasy, including some Comics in the 1940s (see Adventures into the Unknown), whose professional working life extended from 1924 to the 1980s; he was married to Lyda Belknap Long (née Lyda Arco) from 1960; under her name he wrote a series of Gothics [see Checklist]. His birth year is often listed as 1903, since Long misrepresented his age at the start of his career and ...
Connie
US sf Comic strip, written and drawn by Frank Godwin (1889-1959) from its beginnings in 1927 until 1944, when it was terminated after several years of dwindling success. The early years of the strip, which featured throughout the madcap adventures of its eponymous flapper heroine, were relatively mundane, but by the mid-1930s Connie had become involved in Lost-Worlds tales, encounters with ...
Robinson, Nigel
(? - ) UK author best known for various Ties to the Doctor Who universe, beginning with Doctor Who: The Sensorites (1987) and others, later adding two Doctor Who New Adventures: Timewyrm: Apocalypse (1991) and Birthright (1993). Nonfiction quiz books attached to the series are not listed below. He is also responsible a series of ties to the ...
Waller, Leslie
(1923-2007) US author, also resident in Italy and London, who wrote a number of bestsellers and the novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977): Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), published as by Steven Spielberg. He is sometimes credited as co-inventor of the Graphic Novel in America, with the non-sf "picture novel" ...
Simon, Francesca
(1955- ) US-born author, in UK from early adulthood; she initially concentrated on books for younger children, like the Horrid Henry sequence beginning with Horrid Henry and the Mega-Mean Time Machine (2012), but is of more direct interest for the sharply Equipoisal Norse Gods sequence comprising Sleeping Army (2011) and The Lost Gods (2014), set in an ...
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 ...