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Friday 2 June 2023
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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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Richardson, Warren
(? -? ) US author whose occult romance, Dr Zell and the Princess Charlotte [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1892), incorporates some sf-like devices (see Fantastika), including references to the cosmological speculations of Theosophy, and Identity Exchange. [JC]
Kirby, Jack
Pseudonym of US comic-book illustrator Jacob Kurtzberg (1917-1994), who was known as Jack Kirby from about 1940, though he does not seem to have taken that name legally; other early pseudonyms include Jack Curtiss, Curt Davis, Ted Grey, Lance Kirby and Fred Sande. One of the giants in the Comics industry, he began his more than fifty-year career in 1936 working on newspaper comic strips for the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate; briefly, in 1939, he worked for Fleischer ...
Gospodinov, Georgi
(1968- ) Bulgarian poet, playwright and author, much of whose work portrays modern Europe as a labyrinth riddled by time, some of the narrative elements involved clearly originating in Fantastika. Two of his translated works are of interest. The "pathological empathy" endured by the protagonist of Fizika na tagata (2012; trans Angela Rodel as The Physics of Sorrow 2015) works ...
Starweb
Board and counter Wargame (1976). Flying Buffalo. Designed by Rick Loomis. / Starweb is a Play by Mail (and, more recently, Play by Email) strategy game which, like Stellar Conquest (1974), includes many of the features later seen in 4X Games. Every player begins the game as absolute ruler of a species which ...
Wylie, Dirk
Name adopted by Joseph H Dockweiler (1920-1949) – also known as Harry Dockweiler – a member of the Futurians fan group, for several stories written in collaboration with Frederik Pohl, with whom he set up the Dirk Wylie Literary Agency after the war (Pohl continued under this name after Wylie's fatal illness forced him to resign). C M Kornbluth also had a hand in one of these, "Vacant ...
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 ...