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Wednesday 17 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 ...
Susann, Jacqueline
(1918-1974) US author most famous for her first novel, Valley of the Dolls (1966); her only sf is the posthumous Yargo (1979), which, written in the 1950s, tells the tale of a young woman abducted by a UFO actually trying to kidnap Albert Einstein; she falls in love with Yargo, the ruler of the planet Yargo (see Exogamy), but is sent off on Planetary Romance adventures ...
Fennerton, William
Pseudonym of UK author and BBC foreign correspondent Ian Campbell McDougall (1921-2015), most of whose seven novels under this name are Technothrillers that fight shy of sf content. Of sf interest, however, is The Lucifer Cell (1968), which portrays an abject, dope-addicted UK ten years after a successful Invasion by China, which now dominates the civilized world; but there is some hope that the Americans and the ...
Farscape
Australian/US tv series (1999-2003, 2005). Jim Henson Productions for The Sci Fi Channel and Nine Network Australia. Created by Rockne S O'Bannon. Producers include Robert Halmi Jr, Brian Henson, David Kemper and Richard Manning. Directors include Andrew Prowse, Tony Tilse, Ian Watson and Rowan Woods. Writers include Kemper, Manning, Justin Monjo and O'Bannon. Cast includes Ben Browder as John Crichton, Claudia Black as Aeryn Sun, Anthony Simcoe as ...
Roanhorse, Rebecca
(1971- ) US author whose Native American/African American background figures articulately in her work; she began to publish stories of genre interest with "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™" (August 2017 Apex Magazine), which won a Nebula and a Hugo as best short story. She received the John W Campbell Award for best new writer ...
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 ...