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Sunday 8 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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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Stamey, Sara
(1953- ) US author in whose Wild Card Run sequence of sf adventures – Wild Card Run (1987), Win, Lose, Draw (1988) and Double Blind (1990) – a refreshingly tangential attitude towards plotting keeps a young female protagonist with Psi Powers hopscotching from planet to planet. En route she embraces her own tangled family romance on one world, and elsewhere confronts some ...
D.A.R.Y.L.
Film (1985). World Film Services/Columbia. Directed by Simon Wincer. Written by David Ambrose, Allan Scott, Jeffrey Ellis. Cast includes Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean, Barret Oliver, Josef Sommer and Kathryn Walker. 100 minutes. Colour. / D.A.R.Y.L. is a Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform but, when "he" (Oliver) wakes up Amnesiac in the woods, he thinks he is just a small boy, Daryl. Adopted by a pleasant family, he learns not ...
Clifton, Mark
(1906-1963) US author, an industrial psychologist for many years until his retirement around 1950 – mostly occupied in personnel work, putting together many thousands of case histories from which he extrapolated conclusions after the fashion of Kinsey and Sheldon. This practical experience, and the slant of mind it fuelled, mark his work as a writer, beginning with his first stories of genre interest, "What Have I Done?" in Astounding for May 1952, and the ...
Cosmic Science Stories
UK Pulp magazine; one undated issue, circa June 1950, published by Popular Press, London; an abridged reprint of the September 1949 issue of Super Science Stories. The lead novelette was "Minions of Chaos" by John D MacDonald. This magazine was actually #11 in the "New All-Action Stories" series of pulp reprints covering several genres, mostly Western and crime/mystery fiction; ...
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 ...