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Wednesday 18 February 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.
Site updated on 18 February 2026
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Blankenship, William D
(1934-2012) US author whose books often interweave Technothriller and horror modes (see Horror in SF); they include The Helix File (1972), a technothriller with an Arctic setting; The Programmed Man (1973), involving nearly near-future Computers and a purloined Invention; Brotherly Love (1981), a horror novel with a bad twin ...
Crank!
US Semiprozine, Fall 1993 to #8 (undated 1998), initially quarterly but with a two-year gap before the final issue #8 in Spring 1988, trade paperback format, edited and published by Bryan Cholfin from Cambridge, Massachusetts. / The uncompromising style of Cholfin's Broken Mirrors Press (which has published worthy though uncommercial projects by writers such as David R Bunch and R A Lafferty) ...
Kainen, Ray
Usual pseudonym of US author and civil servant Raymond Arvid Kainulainen (1927-2003), of Finnish ancestry, who also published his erotic sf (see Sex) as by Ray Kalnen. His work – all of it released within a four-year period – was sharply told and occasionally witty, as in the fantasticated Parody of Terry Southern's Candy (1964) in A Sea of Thighs (1968), or per the ...
Valigursky, Ed
(1926-2009) Working name of American artist Edward Valigursky, sometimes credited as such or simply as Valigursky; on a few occasions, he used the pseudonym William Rembach. After artistic training at the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Academy of Arts, and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, he began working as an associate art director for Ziff-Davis in 1952, became art director for Quinn Publishing in the following year, and moved into freelance work two ...
Mitchell, J A
(1845-1918) US editor – he founded Life magazine in 1883, editing it until his death – and author in various genres. The Romance of the Moon (1886 chap) is a fantasy for children; Mitchell's sf proper begins with The Last American: A Fragment from the Journal of Khan-Li, Prince of Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy (1889 chap; exp 1902), a somewhat spoofish Satire in which a thirtieth-century Persian ...
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 ...