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Thursday 12 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.
Site updated on 9 February 2026
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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 ...
Red Planet Mars
Film (1952). Melaby Pictures/United Artists. Directed by Harry Horner. Written by John L Balderston and Anthony Veiller, based on the play Red Planet (produced in New York in late 1932; 1933 chap) by Balderston and John E Hoare. Cast includes Peter Graves, Andrea King and Marvin Miller. 87 minutes. Black and white. / Two young US Scientists, the married couple Chris Cronyn (Graves) and Linda Cronyn ...
McCoy, John
(1857-1924) US medical doctor and author of A Prophetic Romance: Mars to Earth (1896) as by The Lord Commissioner, set in a distant Near Future North America, about a century hence, which has evolved into a socialist Utopia with restrictions on executive salaries and a female president (see Women in SF). A visitor from Mars, the Lord Commissioner whose reports back ...
Whip Hand, The
Film (1951; vt The Enemy Within). RKO Radio Pictures. Produced by Lewis J Rachmil. Directed by William Cameron Menzies. Written by George Bricker, and Frank L Moss from a story by Roy Hamilton, and Stanley Rubin. Cast includes Carla Balenda, Edgar Barrier, Raymond Burr (Steve Loomis), Elliot Reid and Otto Waldis (Dr Wilhelm Bucholtz). 82 minutes. Black and white. / While on a fishing trip to Minnesota, magazine writer Matt Corbin (Reid) stumbles across a lake where all the ...
Maurois, André
Initially the pseudonym of prolific French man of letters and author Émile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog (1885-1967), who took the name from a village he visited during active service in World War One; in 1947 he took it as his legal name. He was best known outside of France for his romantic biographies and other nonfiction, though his first work, "La dernière histoire du monde" ["The Final History of the World"] (1903) as by Émile Herzog, was sf ...
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 ...