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Thursday 13 November 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.
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Swearing
Genre SF authors often depict futuristic swearing, blasphemy and other forms of foul speech, not always with any great conviction. Robert Graves's Lars Porsena; Or, the Future of Swearing and Improper Language (1927 chap; exp vt The Future of Swearing and Improper Language 1936) foreshadows the problem afflicting the SF Magazines for decades after the year of his ...
Engle, Eloise
Working name of US author Eloise Katherine Engle Paananen (1923-1993). Her sf novel, Countdown for Cindy (1962), is a light Space Opera whose heroine, an Aerospace Force nurse, becomes the first American woman to visit the Moon. [JC/DRL]
Charnock, Anne
(1954- ) UK author whose loose but thematically cogent Calculated Life sequence, comprising A Calculated Life (2012; rev 2013) and The Enclave (2017 chap), depicts a complexly Dystopian Near Future Britain, where advances in Genetic Engineering have had believably mixed consequences: for in a world increasingly controlled by ...
Scott, Gavin
(1950- ) UK screenwriter and author, whose several novelizations of the film Small Soldiers (1998) (see Toys in SF) for the Young Adult and younger children markets include Small Soldiers (1998), Small Soldiers: The Gorgonites' s Quest (1998) and Small Soldiers: Top Secret Dossier (1998). The underlying premise of the film is that advanced ...
Talbot, Bryan
(1952- ) UK Comics artist and author, a prolific and at times excitingly experimental author/artist of much work since the beginning of the 1970s. After the nature of comics, most of his work escapes realistic trammels as with the material assembled as Bryan Talbot's Brainstorm: The Complete Chester P Hackenbush and Other Underground Classics (various original works here assembled; graph coll 1982). In ...
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 ...