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Sunday 8 November 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.
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Bigly, Cantell A
Pseudonym of US author George Washington Peck (1817-1859), author of a travel book, Melbourne, and the Chincha Islands; With Sketches of Lima, and a Voyage Round the World (1854) under his own name. His novel as Bigly, Aurifodina; Or, Adventures in the Gold Region (1849; vt Aurifodina; Or, Adventures in the Gold Region: A Fantastical '49er Novel 1974), is a Lost Race Satire set in an unknown ...
Khoury, Raymond
(1960- ) Lebanon-born investment banker, screenwriter, illustrator and author, mostly either in US from 1975 or latterly in the UK. His Last Templar sequence beginning with The Last Templar (2005), in which a contemporary archaeologist begins to discover, via papers and treasure hidden in a pouch, the true Secret Masters history of the Knights Templar; she is soon joined by an FBI agent. Some scenes are set in the ...
Seiun Award
["Nebula Award"] The name for a set of genre prizes voted on by members of the annual Japanese Science Fiction Convention. These Awards take their name from the short-lived Seiun ["Nebula"], a single-issue magazine published by Tetsu Yano in 1954, and acknowledged as Japan's first. Despite the titular resemblance to the Nebula awards given by ...
Leimbach, Marti
(1963- ) US author, almost entirely of nonfantastic novels, often with a focus on Medicine and the complex traumas of illness, with an emphasis on neurological conditions. The best known of these tales are probably Dying Young (1990) and Daniel Isn't Talking (2006); both were filmed. Leimbach is of sf interest for the Near Future Young Adult ...
Kirby, Josh
(1928-2001) Nickname and working name of UK illustrator Ronald William Kirby, trained at Liverpool School of Art. He was occasionally though rarely credited as Ron Kirby. Kirby's work in sf began in the mid-1950s with covers for Dan Morgan's Cee-Tee Man (1955), the 1956 Pan paperback of Ian Fleming's Moonraker (1955) and for Authentic Science Fiction (6 ...
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 ...