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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 ...
Le Guin, Ursula K
(1929-2018) US author and poet, based in Portland, Oregon, whose first novel was published in 1966; by 1970 she was already recognized as one of the most important writers within the field. Decades before her death, her reputation had extended far beyond the readership of Genre SF, while within the genre she was honoured with five Hugos and six Nebulas; as much attention has been paid to her by the academic ...
Elias, Albert J
(1920-2007) US author of some detective fiction and of two sf novels, The Bowman Test (1977), about a possible Reincarnation of the Messiah, and The Sonora Mutation (1978). [JC]
Yanovsky, V S
(1906-1989) Russian physician and author, in France between 1927 and 1942, when he emigrated to the United States, whose nonfiction deals in popular terms with medical issues. He is of sf interest for No Man's Time (trans Isabelle Levitin and Roger Nyle Parris from Russian ms 1967), which W H Auden, in his introduction, describes through reference to J R R Tolkien's concept of the Secondary World. More precisely, ...
British Science Fiction Association Award
This Award developed from the original British Fantasy Award, which was sponsored by the British Science Fiction Association and initially made to a writer: John Brunner won the first in 1966. Following various organizational difficulties the award was relaunched in 1970 as the British Science Fiction Association Award – usually ...
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 ...