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Tuesday 17 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 16 February 2026
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Bahnson, Agnew H, Jr
(1915-1964) US author, textile-machinery manufacturer and speculative thinker much involved in problems of Gravity; fittingly, his Near-Future political thriller, The Stars Are too High (1959), features a Scientific Hoax in which fake Aliens with a real gravity-driven ship try to bring peace to the world. After his death in a plane crash, the University of ...
Stevens, Jessi Jezewska
(1990- ) US author, resident in Geneva, Switzerland; most of her work, including several stories published since around 2010, is nonfantastic; her first novel, The Exhibition of Perephone Q (2020), approaches the fantastic in its examination of life in New York in terms of Identity theft. Her second novel, The Visitors (2022), Equipoisally assesses the ...
Erpenbeck, Jenny
(1967- ) German opera director and author who is of sf interest for her second novel, Aller Tage Abend (2012; trans Susan Bernofsky as The End of Days 2014) which resembles Kate Atkinson's almost simultaneous Life After Life (2013) in its treatment of the twentieth century as being more than one might ask of any protagonist to live through without dying again and again ...
Watts, Peter
(1958- ) Canadian marine biologist and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "A Niche" in Tesseracts3 (anth 1990) edited by Candas Jane Dorsey and Gerry Truscott; his early short fiction was assembled as Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes (coll 2001); Beyond the Rift (coll 2013) mostly assembles more recent stories. He is very much better known, however, for his longer work, in ...
Martian Manhunter
A DC Comics Superhero created by Joseph Samachson, who first appeared in issue #225 of Detective Comics (1955); in early adventures, he is referred to as J'onn J'onzz, Manhunter from Mars (his Martian name) before his current title became canonical. He is a green-skinned, hairless humanoid who is Teleported from Mars to ...
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 ...