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Saturday 8 August 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.
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Graham, Jo
(1968- ) US author, whose early work, beginning with Black Ships (2008), which is based on Virgil's Aeneid (circa 29-19 BC), and is fantasy, as is Lost Things (2012) with Melissa Scott, which seems to be the first volume of a series of fantasies set in a modestly Steampunk 1920s, where gods and goddesses are discovered beneath Lake Nemi. Of sf interest is a series of ...
Salwowski, Mark
(1953- ) British artist. He moved with his family to Australia at the age of eleven, graduated from high school, and obtained two years of artistic training at college until a motorcycle accident ended his educational career. He soon went to work for a printing company, eventually serving as its Senior Product Coordinator, before going into business as a freelance artist. Returning to Britain in 1984, he began receiving assignments to paint sf and ...
Batchelor, John Calvin
(1948- ) US author whose first two novels, The Further Adventures of Halley's Comet (1980) and The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica (1983), are borderline fantasy and sf respectively. He has also published two mainstream novels, American Falls (1985) and Gordon Liddy Is My Muse, by Tommy "Tip" Paine (1990). With John R Hamilton he wrote Thunder in the Dust: Images of Western Movies (1987). / ...
Godgame
A frequent shorthand in sf/fantasy Terminology for tales whose outcome is controlled, and whose characters are usually weighed in the balance, by a god-like figure. The term was coined by John Fowles to describe the scenario of The Magus (1965; rev 1977), whose working title was in fact «The Godgame». His magus-figure Conchis ensnares the young narrator in a maze of delusive scenes that challenge ...
Gier, Scott G
(1948- ) US author of a military sf series, the Genellan sequence – comprising Genellan: Planetfall (1995), Genellan: In the Shadow of the Moon (1996), Genellan: First Victory (1997) and Genellan: Earth Siege (2005) – in which an First Contact between a gingerly expansionist humanity and a mysterious Alien race called the Ulaggi ends in ...
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 ...