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Monday 14 July 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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Nogaret, François-Félix
(1740-1831) French bureaucrat and author, intermittently prolific from around 1770 to 1830; he is of sf interest for Le Miroir des événements actuels, ou la belle au plus offrant, Histoire à deux visages ["The Mirror of Present Events, or, Beauty to the Highest Bidder: A Two-Faced Tale"] [for various versions see Checklist below] (1790 chap; trans Brian Stableford as "The Mirror of Present Events; Or, Beauty to the ...
Napier, Bill
Working name of Scottish astronomer and author William M Napier (1940- ), whose several Technothrillers teasingly approach genuine sf patterns of cognition, but generally baulk from taking them as the burden of the tales told; the titles closest to full sf include Nemesis (1998) and The Lure (2002), the former featuring a threatened US Asteroid impact with devious political ...
Dorn, Michael
(1952- ) US actor – in various Star Trek series and one film, and elsewhere – and author of an sf novel, Time Blender (1997) with Hilary Hemingway and Jeffry P Lindsay, whose title accurately describes the consequences of an archaeologist's discovery of a time portal (see Timeslip) in which various epochs come ...
Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat
(1880-1932) Bengali activist, educator and author, born Roquia Khatun; her surname is also given as Hussain, and she was also known (and published) as Begama Rokeẏā, Rokeya Begum and Begum Rokeya Sakhaoyat Hossain. It has been suggested that she may have been born in 1877. She was fluent in several languages, but from the beginning of her career in 1902 wrote mostly in Bengali; her influential advocacy of education for women, and for women's rights in ...
Bill Haley and His Comets
US rock-n-roll band, founded and fronted by Bill Haley (1925-1981); also listed on releases as Bill Haley and The Comets and Bill Haley's Comets. Haley's former group The Saddlemen performed an early (July 1951) cover version of what many historians of popular music consider the first true rock 'n' roll song, "Rocket 88" (1951) by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats (actually Brenston with Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm) – the title refers to the Oldsmobile car, ...
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 ...