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Monday 9 March 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 March 2026
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Calder, Ritchie
(1906-1982) Scottish journalist, academic and author, active from 1922. He is of relevance to sf for his life-time advocacy of the science-driven creation of a peaceful future (see Futures Studies), from a left standpoint which, always moderate, never led him into any of the twentieth-century ideological bearpits into which the left (and the right) toppled so grimly and so often. His first book, The Birth of the Future (1934), is significant ...
Turton, Godfrey
(1901-1985) UK author of such fantasies as The Devil's Churchyard (1970) and The Festival of Flora: A Story of Ancient and Modern Times (1972). He remains of some sf interest for There Was Once a City (1927), in which an ancient City is inundated through a Disaster whose causation is Equipoisal between supernatural hubris and natural cataclysm; and ...
Vance, Gerald
Ziff-Davis House Name (1941-1958), a personal pseudonym of William P McGivern until 1944 (though it is not certain that all Vance stories up to that date were by him); from 1948-1950 the name was used mostly by Chester S Geier, and between 1951 and 1956 it was again used several times by McGivern in Amazing and ...
Pohle, Robert W, Jr
(1949- ) US author of a Space Opera, Doom of Three Planets (1978), and of a study of the actor Christopher Lee (1922-2015), The Films of Christopher Lee (1983) with Douglas C Hart. The latter is long out of date. [JC]
Rubinstein, Paul
(1935- ) Polish-born author, in US from before World War Two, son of the pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982); author mostly of cookbooks, though The Petrodollar Takeover (1975) with Peter Tanous is of sf interest as a Near Future tale in which Saudi Arabia attempts to stabilize its precarious relationship with Iran by buying stock in General Motors. [JC]
Clute, John
(1940- ) Canadian critic, editor and author, in the UK from 1969; married to Judith Clute from 1964, partner of Elizabeth Hand since 1996. He began to publish work of genre interest with an sf-tinged poem "Carcajou Lament" in Triquarterly for Winter 1960 [ie Autumn 1959]; he began consistently publishing sf reviews in his "New Fiction" column for the Toronto Star (1966-1967), and later in ...