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Monday 11 May 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 11 May 2026
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Suzuki Kōji
(1957-2026) Japanese author and essayist, largely known in English through the Cinema adaptations of several of his books, the international success of which obscured his wide-ranging domestic output. His horror and Equipoisal fiction proceeded in tandem with a wide array (not listed here) of books on young fatherhood and occasional works on motorcycle travel. He was also the translator of Simon Brett's ...
Zecca, Ferdinand
(1864-1947) Pioneering French filmmaker (see Cinema) who directed over 160 films between 1899 and 1915 (plus one in 1919), virtually all for Pathé Frères. Subject matter included Religion, history, Fantasy, melodrama and moral tales, as well as one about a hotel employee who peeps through keyholes. / Only a few of his films are sf. One is Le Voleur Invisible ...
O'Brien, Willis H
(1886-1962) US special-effects supervisor in the Cinema industry. For his own amusement he early began to experiment with stop-motion photography. A one-minute home movie of an animated caveman and Dinosaur, involving 960 separate exposures, led to the producer and exhibitor Herman Wobber (1880-1965) advancing him $5000 to make a more elaborate version of the same subject: The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy ...
Karlins, Marvin
(1941- ) US academic and author, usually of nonfiction relating to his professional work as a Professor of Management. His first book is sf, The Last Man Is Out (1969; vt The New Atoms' Bombshell 1980 as by Robert Browne), a Near Future tale in which a bored scientist uses Computers and other devices to maximize outcomes for the Baseball team he has ...
Baker, Kage
(1952-2010) US author who was born Mary Kate Genevieve Baker but had legally changed her name to Kage Baker by the age of twenty; she worked in insurance and the theatre before publishing In the Garden of Iden (1997; vt In the Garden of Iden: A Novel of the Company 1998), the first in the series of Company or Dr Zeus stories, which occupied most of her career. The sequence, whose implications gradually darkened, focuses on the actions of a cadre of ...
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 ...