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Thursday 16 January 2025
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.
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Mian, Mary
(1902-2001) US translator and author, sometimes using her full name Mary Lawrence Shipman Mian, almost exclusively of Young Adult fantasy tales; she is of sf interest for The Net to Catch War (1975), whose young protagonists are sent 100 years into the past by a Time Travel device, finding themselves on the Santa Fe Trail, where they become involved with the historical Captain St George Cooke (1809-1895) in the ...
Schafer, Kerry
(1963- ) Canadian author, now in USA, whose Books of the Between sequence, comprising Between (2013) and Wakeworld (2014), whose protagonist finds herself increasingly shifting between the normal and a dream world which resembles Virtual Reality; she meets a fellow dreamshifter, romance and danger beckon. The Dream Wars sequence, beginning with The Dream Runner (2013 ebook), is ...
Friedberg, Gertrude
(1908-1989) US author who also taught. Her career as a playwright began early, with Three Cornered Moon (1933), which was later filmed, but she began publishing sf only in April 1963, with "The Short and Happy Death of George Frumkin" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her fine sf novel The Revolving Boy (1966) strikingly tells the story of a child sensitive from his unique birth in free fall to signals, possibly ...
Bernstein, David Siegel
Working name of US data analyst, consultant and author David Jay Bernstein (? - ), who began publishing work of genre interest with "A Long Way Up" in Black Petals for Summer 2003 as by David J Bernstein. He is of some interest for the nonfiction Blockbuster Science: The Real Science in Science Fiction (2017), an informal survey of various topics, including comments on Black Holes, ...
Mannes, Marya
(1904-1990) US author, features editor and journalist, often on Feminist themes. Her first novel, Message from a Stranger (1948), is an afterlife fantasy. In her sf Satire They (1968), the USA is taken over by the under-30s, who determine that everyone must retire by the age of 50, live in segregated Keeps, and undergo euthanasia by the age of 65. [JC/PN]
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 ...