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Monday 15 June 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 15 June 2026
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Yolen, Jane
(1939-2026) US author, partially resident in Scotland, who began publishing poems and articles when still in college, and who first came to notice with books for children, the first of many being Pirates in Petticoats (1963). Of her circa 460 titles, many of which won awards in her field, most were for children (see listing below for some of these), many of them being picture books for younger children; most of her adult fiction, of which she wrote relatively little, was ...
MacInnes, Helen
(1907-1985) Scottish author, in US from 1937 (naturalized 1952); married to the popular broadcaster and academic Gilbert Highet (1906-1978) from 1932 until his death; active from the early 1930s. She was best known for spy novels like Above Suspicion (1941), though she also wrote some well-received romances. The one oddity in her bibliography is Home Is the Hunter: A Comedy in Two Acts (performed 1964; 1964), the only play she wrote in a career of some forty-five ...
Fantastic
US Digest-size magazine, companion to Amazing Stories; published by Ziff-Davis (Summer 1952-June 1965), Ultimate Publishing Co. (September 1965-October 1980); edited by Howard Browne (Summer 1952-August 1956), Paul W Fairman (October 1956-November 1958), Cele Goldsmith (December 1958-June 1965; as Cele G ...
Tubb, E C
(1919-2010) UK editor and author who began publishing sf with "No Short Cuts" in New Worlds for Summer 1951, and for the next half decade or so produced a great amount of fiction, in UK magazines and in book form, under his own name and under many pseudonyms. His total output is in excess of 130 novels and 230 short stories. Of his many pseudonyms, those used for book titles of sf interest include Charles Grey, Gregory Kern, Carl Maddox and the ...
Dos-à-Dos
When two books are bound together so that they share one spine, but with their texts printed upside-down in respect to each other, the composite volume is described in the publishing trade as being bound dos-à-dos (literally "back-to-back"). Such a volume has two front covers and two title pages, which the reader can confirm by turning any example upside-down, revealing a second front cover, right way up, and a second text, likewise. Almost always – though not invariably – ...
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 ...