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Saturday 7 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 6 February 2026
Sponsor of the day: Paul Giamatti
Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Pearl, Jack
(1923-1992) US author of the Space Eagle sequence, comprising The Space Eagle: Operation Doomsday (1967) and The Space Eagle: Operation Star Voyage (1967), and Tied, unusually, to an individual, Raymond J Meurer. The stories are written for the Young Adult market and involve Inventions implausible in their Near Future 1970s context, including ...
Introduction to the Online Edition
Welcome to the Fourth Edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, launched online on 6 October 2021 as a direct continuation of the Third Edition, following the amicable end of our decade-long partnership with Gollancz and the SF Gateway. This reference work, which we continue to refer to in short as the SFE, is edited by John Clute and David Langford, with Graham Sleight as ...
Unearthly Stranger
Film (1963). A Julian Wintel-Leslie Parkyn Production, Independent Artists, American International Pictures. Directed by John Krish. Written by Rex Carlton. Cast includes Gabriella Licudi, Jean Marsh, Warren Mitchell, John Neville and Philip Stone. 74 minutes. Black and white. / In this low-key, unpretentious UK sf film a space Scientist gradually realizes that his wife (who sleeps with her eyes open) ...
Savarin, Julian Jay
(1950- ) Dominican-born musician and author, in the UK since his teens. His Lemmus trilogy – Lemmus One: Waiters on the Dance (1972), Lemmus Two: Beyond the Outer Mirr (1976) and Lemmus Three: Archives of Haven (coll of linked stories 1977) – is an expansive Space Opera in which GOD (the Galactic Organization and Dominions), run by a Forerunner ...
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 ...