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Sunday 19 July 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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Albania
There has been some sf in Albanian since the late 1960s, but not until 1978 was the first sf book published there. By 1991 there had been about a dozen, of which five were by Thanas Qerama, a prolific writer and also an editor of juvenile science magazines; examples are Roboti i pabindur ["Disobedient Robot"] (coll 1981), Një javë në vitin 2044 ["One Week in the Year 2044"] (1982) and Misteri i tempullit të lashtë ["Mystery of the Old ...
Dyson Sphere
Item of sf/scientific Terminology named for a concept put forward by the physicist Freeman J Dyson. According to Dyson, the logical power source for a sufficiently advanced galactic civilization would derive from the reconstruction of its solar system into an artificial biosphere completely enclosing – and thus trapping the maximum possible energy output from – the local sun. This original concept should more ...
Logan, Kirsty
(circa 1985- ) Scottish author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Field Notes from the End of the World" in Shadows & Tall Trees for Spring 2012; early stories, several of them Twice-Tolds [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], were assembled in The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales (coll 2012). Her first novel, The Gracekeepers (2015), ...
Furukawa Hideo
(1966- ) Japanese poet, author and playwright, much garlanded with prizes in the literary field, but with roots and interests firmly in the world of Fantastika, with an insistent sense of bricolage, hommage and recursion. In the genre world, he might be most frequently compared to Yasutaka Tsutsui or Yōko Tawada, but teasing his own literary ...
President's Analyst, The
Film (1967). Panpiper/Paramount. Written and directed by Theodore J Flicker. Cast includes Godfrey Cambridge, James Coburn, Severn Darden, Joan Delaney, Pat Harrington and Barry McGuire. 104 minutes. Colour. / A psychoanalyst (Coburn), hired to listen to the President's troubles, breaks down under the strain. He takes refuge with a "typical" US family who describe themselves as "militant liberals" (the husband collects guns, the wife takes karate lessons and their son specializes in ...
Nicholls, Peter
(1939-2018) Australian editor and author, primarily a critic and historian of sf through his creation and editing of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [see below]; resident in the UK 1970-1988, in Australia from 1988; worked as an academic in English literature (1962-1968, 1971-1977), scripted television documentaries, was a Harkness Fellow in Film-making (1968-1970) in the USA, worked as a publisher's editor (1982-1983), often broadcast film and book ...