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Monday 16 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 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Richards, Lysander Salmon
(1835-1926) US author of Breaking Up; Or, the Birth, Development, and Death of the Earth and its Satellite in Story (1896), a title evoking the cosmological perspectives of an author like the then popular Camille Flammarion, and the epic history being unpacked is intermittently "narratized", to give sentient interest, the viewpoint character being a dead but observant Alien from another star who tracks the ...
Escargots, Les
["The Snails"] French animated film (1966). Société des Film d'Art et de Culture. Directed by René Laloux. Written by Roland Topor and René Laloux. 11 minutes. Colour. / This excellent, wordless short is in a very different style to Laloux and Topor's feature-length collaboration, La Planète Sauvage (1973). A farmer is unable to make his crops grow until he discovers ...
Singh, Nikhil
(? - ) South African artist, musician and author whose first novel, Taty Went West (2015), follows with considerable verve the adventures of a teenaged runaway into the Outzone of an Equipoisally-complex Near Future world, at some Post-Holocaust point where the leashes of consensual reality have been loosened;a Drug ...
M.A.N.T.I.S.
US tv series (1994-1995). Wilbur Force Productions/Renaissance Pictures/Universal Television for Fox Television Network. Created by Sam Hamm and Sam Raimi. Produced by Paris Qualles, Tim Iacofano, and David Roessell. Directors included Cliff Bole, Rob Bowman, Michael Caffey, and Les Landau. Writers included Coleman Luck, Brad Markowitz, Qualles, Bryce Zabel, Mark Scott Zicree. Cast includes Galyn Gorg, Carl Lumbly, Roger Rees and Andrew J Robinson. One ...
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 ...