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Thursday 12 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 ...
Wiener, Norbert
(1894-1964) US mathematician and author who established the contemporary sense of the word Cybernetics in his highly influential nonfiction work Cybernetics; Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948; exp rev 1961). Some of his further speculations in this field appear in The Human Use of Human Beings (1950) and in ...
Johnson, William Oscar
(1931-2012) US author for Sports Illustrated and author, mostly nonfiction focused on professional sports; his sf works include The Zero Factor (1980), about a Near Future attempt to assassinate the American president, and Hammered Gold (1982), a thriller set at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles (see California), where the KGB causes trouble. [JC]
Townsend, John Rowe
(1922-2014) UK journalist, academic and author, whose made-up middle name was used to distinguish him from the author John Townsend. After they had lived together for many years, he and Jill Paton Walsh were married in 2004. Most of his work was for Young Adult readers, beginning with Gumble's Yard (1961; vt Trouble in the Jungle 1969), a nonfantastic ...
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Japanese animated tv series (2002-2005). Based on the Manga by Masamune Shirow. Production I.G. Written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama. Voice cast includes Akio Ohtsuka, Osamu Saka, Sakiko Tamagawa, Atsuko Tanaka and Kōichi Yamadera. 52 25-minute episodes. Colour. / This Anime continues the story of Section 9, the Japanese Government's counter-terrorism and cyber- ...
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 ...