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Thursday 20 January 2022
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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Randall, John D
(1944- ) US author of an extremely late Yellow Peril tale, The Tojo Virus (1991), in which a Japanese super-corporation plans to infect America's Computers with an incapacitating virus (see Paranoia). [JC]
Upload
This real-world term for the transfer of data to a remote Computer (for example, new or amended web pages to a website host) has taken on a special sf significance as denoting the copying or transfer of a human or other personality to a sentient software representation. Interesting early examples are "Ghost" (May 1943 Astounding) by Henry Kuttner and C L Moore, in which the final despair (if not the full personality) of a suicidal depressive becomes impressed on a supercomputer which ...
Contributors
Contributors to this encyclopedia may be identified by their initials, appearing (along with others if the entry has multiple authors) at the end of the main text for each entry. The first list below links initials to full names. Roughly half of the contributors themselves receive entries in this book, and are listed below with their surnames marked as normal hyperlinks to their entries. Brief descriptions of contributors without entries are incorporated into the list. A second list, further ...
Zahn, Timothy
(1951- ) US author with a master's degree in physics who began publishing sf with "Ernie" for Analog in September 1979, and early proved himself an adept and productive creator of the problem-oriented Hard SF characteristic of that magazine. Some better examples of his work are assembled as Cascade Point (coll 1986), Time Bomb and Zahndry Others (coll 1988), Distant Friends and Others (coll 1992) and Star Song and Other Stories (coll 2002); the first's title story ...
Jin Yong
Writing name of Zha Liangyong GBM, OBE (1924-2018), also known as Louis Cha, a Chinese newspaper publisher, editor and author, particularly in the Wuxia tradition of heroic martial-arts fiction. A graduate from Soochow University in international law, he was posted to Hong Kong to set up a branch of the Shanghai newspaper Ta Kung Pao in 1947. Zha became a permanent resident of the city, moonlighting as a novelist with Shu Jian Enchou Lu (February 1955-September 1956 Xin Wan Bao; fixup 1976; ...
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 and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible (which see). His one ...