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Saturday 14 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 ...
Birch, A G
(1883-1972) US author whose sole known work of genre interest was the novella "The Moon Terror", serialized in Weird Tales for May and June 1923. As the title story it filled most of the early sf Anthology The Moon Terror (anth 1927) edited anonymously, presumably by the Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright. This has led to some bibliographic confusion since the front ...
Sessions, Richard
(? - ) US neuroscientist and author in whose first sf novel, Island Woman (1997), a contemporary woman is in a sense kidnapped via Timeslip into eighteenth century New Spain (see California), where it is intended that she create an Alternate History of America; her immersion in the Native American Chumash civilization is anthropologically sound ...
Montgomery, Frances Trego
(1858-1925) US author, mostly of books for children, best known for tales about Billy Whiskers, a goat. Her Electric Elephant sequence – The Wonderful Electric Elephant (1903) and On a Lark to the Planets: A Sequel to the "Wonderful Electric Elephant" (1904) – describes in a Dime-Novel manner the Edisonade of a young man who encounters an elephant in the Rockies and immediately ...
I Am Number Four
Film (2011). DreamWorks SKG and Reliance Big Entertainment present a Bay Films production. Directed by D J Caruso. Written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar and Marti Noxon, based on the novel by Pittacus Lore. Cast includes Dianna Agron, Callan McAuliffe, Timothy Olyphant, Teresa Palmer and Alex Pettyfer. 109 minutes. Colour. / Optioned with impetuous haste on the basis of an in-progress draft of the novel and rushed into accelerated production 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 ...