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Wednesday 14 May 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.
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Fabian, Stephen E
(1930-2025) American artist, sometimes credited as Steve Fabian or simply Fabian. The self-trained Fabian first worked as an electronic engineer, but he began contributing art to Fanzines in the late 1960s and became a full-time professional artist in 1973. He did a number of covers and interior art for SF Magazines, mostly Amazing, Fantastic, and ...
Frisbie, Henry S
(1863-1950) US author of an sf Utopia, Prophet of the Kingdom (1901). [JC]
Man with Two Brains, The
Film (1983). Aspen Film Society. Directed by Carl Reiner. Written by Reiner, Steve Martin, George Gipe. Cast includes Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner and David Warner. 93 minutes, cut to 86 minutes. Colour. / Pastiche is the essence of most Steve Martin comedies; his self-indulgent acting style becomes rapidly tiresome when his performances are not focused by a good director, but Reiner is good, and this is a genuinely funny film spoofing the ...
van Scyoc, Sydney J
(1939-2023) US author, active in the Unitarian Church, who began publishing work of genre interest with Shatter the Wall (February 1962 Galaxy; 2016 ebook), and afterwards contributed stories regularly to the magazines. She soon became best known for her novels, beginning with the impressive Saltflower (1971), in which Aliens seed Earth to produce a new breed of "men" designed to create ...
Psi Powers
A name given to the full spectrum of mental powers studied by the Pseudoscience of parapsychology, and a common item of sf Terminology. In his book From Anecdote to Experiment in Psychical Research (1972), Robert Thouless claims that he and Dr B P Wiesner invented the term, prior to its use in sf circles, as being less liable to suggest a pre-existing theory than the term "Extra Sensory Perception" (or ...
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 ...