SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 7 September 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 31 August 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953-2026), who showed an interest throughout his career in Superheroes of the Pulp tradition (on which he was a known authority) such as Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap). In this context he had been literary agent for Lester Dent's estate since 1979. ...
Cameron, Claire
(1973- ) Canadian author whose third novel, The Last Neanderthal (2017), combines a Prehistoric SF narrative – whose Neanderthal protagonist finds herself intimately involved with a Homo sapiens male as the weather worsens – with the twenty-first century story of a pregnant archaeologist who, 40,000 years later, discovers her ancestor's bones. The close community of Neanderthal ...
O'Reilly, John Boyle
(1844-1890) Irish-born political agitator, journalist, poet and author; for his Fenian activities he was transported to Western Australia in 1867, but soon escaped, arriving in the US in 1869. His sf novel about a republican England, The King's Men: A Tale of Tomorrow (1884) with Robert Grant, S of Dale (a pseudonym of US lawyer and diplomat Frederic Jesup Stimson) and John T ...
Yuasa Masaaki
(1965- ) Japanese director, scriptwriter and animator. Initially employed by Ajia-do Animation Works Inc., he became a freelance animator in 1994, going on to be the animation producer, storyboarder and co-writer for Cat Soup (2001), then writing and directing Mind Game (2004). He subsequently joined the Madhouse studio to work on various ...
Dragt, Tonke
Working name of Dutch East Indies-born illustrator and author Antonia Johanna Dragt (1930- ), in The Netherlands after 1945; most of her work, much of it sf or fantasy, is designed for Young Adult readers, including her best known work, the Dragonaut series including De brief voor de koning ["The Letter for the King"] (1962) and Geheimen van het Wilde Woud ["Secrets of the Wild Wood"] (1965), a fantasy ...
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 ...