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Tuesday 8 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.
Site updated on 7 July 2025
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Comic Inferno
A more or less self-explanatory item of Terminology coined by Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (1960), describing sf which cheerfully extracts Satire or outright black Humour from a scenario rooted in Dystopia. Examples cited by Amis include Anthony Boucher's ...
Urbanski, Debbie
(? - ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Wonder" in Interzone for September/October 2012. Her first novel, After World (2023), set in a distant-Near-Future Ruined Earth, is narrated by an AI "story worker" who traces the experiences of a Last Man figure, herself set in ...
Cole, Charles
(? -? ) US author of Visitors from Mars: A Narrative (1901), whose protagonist, frustrated after the failure of his Invention, a heavier-than-air plane, to win earthly success, is approached by a small man from Mars, who persuades him to visit. On arrival, the protagonist is made welcome to the Martian Utopia, whose inhabitants are vegetarian, atheist, extremely ...
Raines, Theron
(1925-2012) US literary agent and author in whose sf novel, The Singing: A Fable about What Makes us Human (1988), a team of Martians crashes its UFO into the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where one of them, according to plan, meets and impregnates the human girl through whose eyes the tale is told. Both sides get what they need: for Mars new blood, and for the Earth unsubtle flattery of our tough and ...
Daníelsson, Hjalti
(1979- ) Icelandic author (see Iceland) who has been deeply involved as designer and story creator for the Videogame EVE Online, a Space Sim (see Massively Multiplayer Online Games), a Space Opera enterprise set in a ...
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 ...