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Wednesday 11 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 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Invisibility
The fantasy of being able to make oneself invisible is a common childhood daydream. As with all such daydreams, literary treatments of the theme tend to be cautionary tales; the three-decker novel The Invisible Gentleman (1833) by James Dalton is the most extravagant nineteenth-century example. No good comes of it in such early sf stories as Edward Page Mitchell's "The Crystal Man" (January 1881 The Sun anon), H G ...
SF Commentary
Australian Fanzine (1969-current) edited, published, and written by Bruce Gillespie, Melbourne, 97 issues to August 2018; some individual issues guest-edited by John Foyster (#10, #19, #27, #32, #34, #38) and Barry Gillam (#16). / US quarto (letter-size); duplicated #1 (January 1969) to #48/49/50 (October 1976); photo-offset #51 (March 1977) to #52 (June 1977); duplicated #53 (April 1978) to ...
RoboCop 3
Film (1992, but released late 1993). Orion. Directed by Fred Dekker. Written Frank Miller and Dekker based on a story by Miller based on characters created by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. Cast includes Nancy Allen, Robert Burke, John Castle, Jill Hennessy, Remy Ryan and Rip Torn. 104 minutes. Colour. / With each sequel, life has been leached from the original RoboCop (1987) scenario, remembered for its ...
Jackson, Stuart
(? -2006) UK teacher and author, whose Tracer (1990) depicts a Near Future Britain whose government jails AIDS victims. [JC]
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 ...