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Tuesday 6 June 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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 6 June 2023
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Preston, H
Pseudonym used for fiction by US technical author Henry Preston Nail (1931-2012), author of Project Deep Space (2000), set in the moderately distant Near Future as private corporations finally provide the impetus to launch Homo sapiens into interstellar space; the Invention of successively more efficient Spaceship drives is focused upon. [JC]
Burnside, John
(1955- ) Scottish poet, journalist and author, active from the mid-1980s. He is of sf interest for Havergey (2017), a Near Future Utopia set on the eponymous Scottish Island in 2056, a few decades after a series of planet-wide Disasters, mostly in the form of plagues, has reduced the world's population by 90%. The visitor to Havergey, who is ...
Shaffer, Eugene Carl
(? - ) US author of three sf novels: The Last Breath (1974), in which apocalyptic Disasters force the evacuation of Earth; The Clones (1980), which takes a dim view of Clones, as they will revolt and must be exterminated; and Panic 7 (1980), in which civilization is again threatened. [JC]
Barlow, James
(1921-1973) UK author, known mainly for such work outside the sf field as Term of Trial (1961). His sf novel proper, One Half of the World (1957), presents a UK ruled by a totalitarian leftist regime; the protagonist, finding God again (and love), conflicts with the powers-that-be, unsuccessfully. The right-wing approach of this book (see Politics) is typical of British Dystopian fiction in the 1950s. ...
Kehuan Shijie
[Literally "SF World", although the publisher's preferred translation is "Science Fiction World"] The journal of record of the modern sf community in China, Kehuan Shijie was founded in 1979 in Chengdu, Sichuan, as the State-supported Kexue Wenyi ["Science Literature and Art"], one of several magazines that sprang up amid a post-Mao renewal of interest in science popularization. However, with a sudden reversal in the Party line on sf, and claims that the ...
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 ...