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Monday 16 June 2025
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 June 2025
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Longyear, Barry B
(1942-2025) US author and editor who ran a printing company with his wife before beginning to write in 1977, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "The Tryouts" in Asimov's for November/December 1978. Before his 1981 hospitalization for alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs – an experience which formed the basis of his non-sf novel Saint Mary Blue (1988) – he had already published prolifically, sometimes as by Frederick ...
Unusual Stories
US Digest-size magazine. Three issues March 1934 to Winter 1935, published by Fantasy Publishers, Everett, Pennsylvania; edited by William L Crawford. An advance issue of this Semiprozine (see also Small Presses) was published (and mailed) in two parts in 1934, and could be considered as #1, even though the 1935 issues are referred to as #1 ...
Boitard, Pierre
(1787-1859) French botanist, geologist and author, whose two works of sf interest are composed for young readers; each title appeared separately in 1830s journals, and was subsequently assembled in revised form in Paris avant les hommes (coll 1861; trans Brian Stableford as Journey to the Sun 2016). The framing narrative, in which a demon conducts a human interlocutor on a guided tour of regions of interest, is shared. "Etudes ...
Whiteside, Edward
(? - ) US author of the Near Future A Warning from Mars (1948 chap), set on Mars, here known as Amkonia, where free enterprise has flourished until a New-Deal-like socialist Dystopia takes over and ruins the planet; the Satire is heavy, and an inserted history of freed slaves, here known as Boogaloos, is intensely unpleasant. ...
Prisoner, The
UK tv series (1967-1968). An Everyman Films production for ATV. Produced by David Tomblin. Created, starring and partly written and directed by Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009); other writers included George Anthony Skene, Terence Feely; other directors included Don Chaffey, Pat Jackson. Script edited by George Markstein. Theme music by Ron Grainer. 17 50-minute episodes. Cast includes McGoohan, Leo McKern, Angelo Muscat, Peter Swanwick. Colour. / In this ...
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 ...