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Thursday 12 March 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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Fujii Taiyō
(1971- ) Japanese author, largely in the Technothriller mode, who legendarily wrote his first novel on an iPhone while working as a software developer. A graduate of the International Christian University in Tokyo, Fujii became a poster-boy for post-modern media when his self-published debut Gene Mapper – core - (2012 ebook) topped an Amazon best-seller list, and was soon co-opted by the ...
Space Habitats
The space habitat is a natural development from the concept of the manned Space Station (which see). Inevitably there is considerable overlap, with a broad and fuzzy dividing line between space stations which are primarily seen as way-stations or scientific observation posts, and space habitats whose occupants have come to regard them as home. J D Bernal's The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1929 chap) proposed ...
Fourth Kind, The
Film (2009). Universal Pictures and Gold Circle Films presents a Chambara Pictures and Dead Crow Pictures production in association with Focus Films, Fourth Kind Productions and Saga Film. Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi. Written by Osunsanmi with Terry Robbins. Cast includes Enzo Cilenti, Raphaël Coleman, Corey Johnson, Milla Jovovich, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Elias Koteas, Mia Mckenna-Bruce, Charlotte Milchard and Will Patton. 98 minutes. Colour. / A psychologist (see ...
Delaney, Laurence
(? - ) US author in more than one genre, for the most part nonfantastic; his novel of sf interest, The Triton Ultimatum (1977), is a Technothriller whose terrorist cast, having hijacked a nuclear submarine, inadvertently sets off World War Three. Fortunately America survives more or less by accident and, prompted by this eucatastrophe, takes over the planet. [JC]
Acker, Kathy
(1947-1997) US playwright and author born Karen Alexander, who may never have met her biological father Harry Lehman Jr; she went as Kathy from early childhood, and took the surname of her first husband, Robert Acker, on ther marriage in 1966. She lived in the UK off and on for many years. Acker's apocalyptic sense of the latter-day world is conveyed in works whose tortured absurdity (see Fabulation) sometimes catches the reader by surprise, or transfixes the ...
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 ...