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Saturday 11 April 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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Daniel, Charles S
(1851-? ) US author whose sf novel, Ai: A Social Vision (1892), which is set in 1950, describes some futile attempts to construct a Utopia; the protagonist, perhaps in despair, makes it clear that only a heavy dose of Eugenics can clear a path for the new world. [JC]
Hertzka, Theodor
(1845-1924) Austrian economist and author of the influential socialist Utopia, Freiland: Ein Sociales Zukunftsbild (1890; trans Arthur Ransom – clearly not the writer and translator Arthur Ransome – as Freeland: A Social Anticipation 1891) and its sequel, Eine Reise nach Freiland (1893; trans anon as ...
Lorrain, Jean
Pseudonym of French poet, playwright and author Paul Alexandre Martin Duval (1855-1906), active (but already in ill health) from the early 1880s. The contes cruels and fantasticated fever-dreams for which he remains best known, and which established him as a central exponent (and dweller within) of late nineteenth-century Decadence, edge occasionally into sf topoi, but are more easily thought of in terms of a loosened ...
World War Three
Following the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs which ended World War Two, a third world War involving nuclear Holocaust became the recurring nightmare of twentieth-century sf throughout the Cold War decades and even beyond. Often it was tacitly assumed that a third world war would constitute the final instalment of a worldwide state of conflict that began in 1914 and whose ...
Sarah Jane Adventures, The
UK tv series (2007-2011). Created by Russell T Davies for BBC Wales. Producers include Davies, Julie Gardner, Nikki Smith, and Phil Ford. Directors include Joss Agnew, Alice Troughton, and Graeme Harper. Writers include Davies, Ford, and Gareth Roberts. Cast includes Daniel Anthony, Tommy Knight, Anjli Mohindra (season 2 and onwards), Yasmin Paige (season 1) and Elisabeth Sladen. 60-minute pilot followed by 46 30-minute episodes. / The second ...
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 ...