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Saturday 7 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 6 February 2026
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Sallis, James
(1944-2026) US musician, poet and author, briefly active in New Worlds during its Michael Moorcock-directed New-Wave phase; he began to publish work of genre interest in this context with "Kazoo" (August 1967 New Worlds) and co-edited the magazine 1968-1969. His clearly acknowledged models in the French avant garde and the gnomic brevity of much of his work ...
Fanac Fan History Project, The
This project, launched in 1994, aims to preserve the history of sf and Fandom – in particular Fanzines and Convention publications – and make its ever-increasing archive available online at its website Fanac.org, active since 1996. It is sponsored by the Florida Association for Nucleation and Conventions, Inc, which organized the 1992 Worldcon and whose acronym FANAC is the long-established ...
Stunner
Traditional item of sf Terminology, third in the trio of classic Genre SF hand Weapons: the others are the Blaster and the sometimes synonymous Disintegrator. The Star Trek phaser can famously be set to "stun", but the device was already old in sf. Personal "electric stunners" appear in C M ...
Sussex, Lucy
(1957- ) New Zealand-born author and critic, mostly in Australia since 1971; she began publishing work of genre interest with "The Parish and Mrs Brown" in Dreamworks: Strange New Stories (anth 1983) edited by David King, the first of a number of interesting sf Fabulations like "The Lipton Village Society" (in Strange Attractors, anth 1985, edited by Damien ...
Egan, Doris
(1955- ) US author and executive for television projects, and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Timerider" in Amazing for March 1986; her Ivory sequence – comprising The Gate of Ivory (1989), Two-Bit Heroes (1992) and Guilt-Edged Ivory (1992), all three assembled as The Complete Ivory (omni 2001) – unusually presents a set of essentially ...
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 ...