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Thursday 16 July 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 14 July 2026
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Barlowe, Wayne Douglas
(1958- ) US illustrator whose successful Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (graph 1979; rev vt Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature 1987), in collaboration with Ian Summers and the uncredited Beth Meacham (who wrote the text), was published when he was twenty-one, only two years after he had made his first sale, a cover for ...
Cooper, Richard
(1930-1998) UK author, mostly of scripts for children's television series, including Code Name Icarus (1984), a very Near Future tale about the exploitation of gifted children which he novelized as Code Name Icarus (1984), and Knights of God (1987), which he novelized as Knights of God (1987); the story is set in the year 2020, in an England ruled by a narrow theocracy whose leader is named, significantly, ...
Trowbridge, John
(1843-1923) US professor of physics at Harvard and author, not to be confused with John Townsend Trowbridge (1827-1916), who also wrote stories for children, including a book-length poem, Darius Green and His Flying-Machine (1910), the winged machine of the title not actually capable of flight; he has also been listed, incorrectly, as the author of The Resolute Mr Pansy (1897) [see below]. Trowbridge himself, an advocate of the use of electricity as a universal ...
Reichardt, Jasia
(1933- ) Polish-born journalist, editor, exhibition curator and author, in UK from 1942, having escaped from the Polish ghetto with the aid of a relative, Franciszka Themerson; Reichardt later edited much work for Gaberbocchus Press (see Stefan Themerson) and elsewhere. Of the several exhibitions she has mounted, Cybernetic Serendipity (London: ICA, 1968-1969) (see Cybernetics) was perhaps ...
Brown, Pierce
(1988- ) US author whose Red Rising sequence, comprising Red Rising (2014), Golden Son (2015) and Morning Star (2016), soon proves more interesting than its Young Adult Dystopia trappings might hint. The tale is set on Mars, where society is divided into castes according to imposed colour branding [for Colour-Coding, as more usually ...
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 ...