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Monday 16 June 2025
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 9 June 2025
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Longyear, Barry B
(1942-2025) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by Frederick ...
Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
(1871-1940) Scottish-born Episcopalian priest, academic, teacher, translator and author, in US from 1913. His sf novel, A Romance of Two Centuries: A Tale of the Year 2025 (1919), takes its Sleeper Awakes protagonist from World War One, where he has been infected with sleeping sickness, to the year 2025, where he is partially cured of his illness, finds himself the heir to a huge but disputed fortune, and ...
Prisons
Scenarios of future Crime and Punishment frequently include prison facilities, ranging from mild extrapolation of present-day institutions to highly exotic variants from which escape is theoretically impossible but nevertheless often takes place. Influential nonfantastic precursors of sf prisons, featuring just such more or less remarkable breakouts, include the real-world, Island-based Château d'If of Alexandre ...
Gale, Floyd C
(1918-1997) Working name of Floyd C Gold, US critic and author, the brother of H L Gold. He began to publish work of genre interest with "Treachery on Planetoid 41" for Amazing in June 1940, a tale of two astronauts shipwrecked on an Asteroid with insufficient supplies to support both before rescue. He began writing the "Galaxy's Five Star Shelf" book review column in Galaxy for ...
Khanna, Rajan
(1974- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Furies" in Shimmer for Autumn 2007. He is of interest for the Ben Gold sequence, comprising Falling Sky (2014) and Rising Tide (2015), set in a Near Future Dystopian world savagely depopulated by what was almost certainly an engineered virus-based ...
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 ...