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Thursday 19 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.
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Deighton, Len
Working name of UK illustrator and author Leonard Cyril Deighton (1929-2026), mostly not resident in Britain after 1969; author of spy novels, cookery books and some other nonfiction, but still perhaps best known for early espionage thrillers like The Ipcress File (1962), the first of the Secret File sequence which features the same undisciplined and unnamed secret agent, and the subsequent Funeral in Berlin (1964). The fourth volume of the series, ...
Dietz, William C
(1945-2026) US author who began to publish sf with War World (1986; vt Galactic Bounty 1997), the first volume of his Sam McCade sequence of sf adventures about an interstellar bounty hunter, which continued with Imperial Bounty (1988) and two further titles. The galactic venue of the series exhibits some interesting kinks, and McCade himself gradually gains individuality. Although the angle of approach differs – the protagonist this time ...
Adams, Eustace L
(1891-1963) US editor and author who was in the American Ambulance Service and the U S Naval Service during World War One. In the 1930s he was a prolific contributor of aviation-linked tales to journals like Argosy. Most of his titles are tales for boys, the best-known of these being the Andy Lane series of Airplane Boys adventures, beginning with Fifteen Days in the Air ...
Eliade, Mircea
(1907-1986) Romanian academic, in UK, Portugal and France from 1940, resident in the US from 1956, most famous as a philosopher of comparative religion [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], though he was a prolific author of fiction, much of it fantastic, from the publication of his first, precocious tale, "Cum am găsit piatr filosofală" ["How I found the Philosopher's Stone"] (1921 ...
Spielberg, Steven
(1947- ) US producer, screenwriter and director; an amateur film-maker in his early teens, Spielberg completed his first sf feature – the 140-minute Firelight (1963) – at the age of 16; he studied English rather than film at college in California. His first professional film was Amblin' (1969), a slick short about hitch-hiking which was distributed as a support feature with the very successful Love Story (1970); it ...
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 ...