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Tuesday 15 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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X Series, The
Videogame series (from 1999). Egosoft. / The X Series is a line of Space Sims, descended from Elite (1984). The player has considerable freedom to explore, trade, mine asteroids, fight pirates (or become one), carry out missions (including bounty-hunting and passenger transport), or create a commercial empire of space-based factories and fleets of starships. The game universe itself is ...
Monir, Alexandra
(? -? ) US singer/songwriter and author most of whose work has been fantasy for Young Adult readers, as in the Timeless sequence beginning with Timeless (2011), which involves its young protagonist in a complicated Timeslip romance. She is of sf interest for the Final Six sequence beginning with The Final Six (2018), set a ...
Spivey, Thomas Sawyer
(1857-1938) US author of two Lost Race novels: The Seven Sons of Ballyhack (1911) is set specifically before the Biblical Flood, where a number of doomed nations are described Satirically; and The Caverns of Crail (1912), set in a less fixed period, though long before identifiable nations exist, and mainly concerned with dynastic disputes. The Last of the Gnostic Masters (1926), which is ...
Signs
Film (2002). Touchstone Pictures (see The Walt Disney Company) presents a Blinding Edge Pictures/Kennedy/Marshall production. Directed by M Night Shyamalan. Written by Shyamalan. Cast includes Abigail Breslin, Rory Culkin, Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. 106 minutes. Colour. / Superficially, Signs is an alien Invasion movie, told from the perspective of an American ...
Scientology
In its early years Scientology was known as Dianetics (which see for details), a term still used within Scientology. The word "Scientology" was coined in 1952 by L Ron Hubbard, its founder; two of his books on the subject are This Is Scientology: The Science of Certainty (1955) and Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought (1956). / The activities of the Scientologists have evolved in many curious ...
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 ...