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Sunday 12 January 2025
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for the masthead; here for 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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Creature that Ate Sheboygan, The
Board and counter Wargame (1979). Simulations Publications Inc (SPI). Designed by Greg Costikyan. / Creature is an entertaining and highly playable game inspired by such 1950s B-movies as Godzilla (1954) (see Gojira) and The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). One player constructs a gigantic ...
Paton, John
Pseudonym of UK author Frederick John Alford Bateman (1921-2004), whose unremarkable Space Operas for Robert Hale Limited comprise Leap to the Galactic Core (1978), Proteus (1978) and The Sea of Rings (1979). [JC]
Wirkus, Tim
(? - ) US author, with a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of South California, whose Mormon upbringing plays a significant part in their work to date. Wirkus's first novel, City of Brick and Shadow (2014), while non-fantastical, draws on the influence of Jorge Luis Borges for a mystery, never resolved, about two hapless, young Mormon missionaries in Brazil who are drawn into a ...
Waller, Robert
(1913-2005) UK editor, environmentalist, radio producer, poet and author, active from the 1930s. He is of some sf interest for Shadow of Authority (1956), a Near Future Satire set in a 1980 Britain, where the National Publishing authority (whose internal structure resembles that of the BBC) controls what may be read. His early and troubled interest in the Ecology of an endangered Earth marked ...
Hatch, Gerald
Pseudonym of US fan and author Dave Foley (1932-1963), whose sf novel, The Day the Earth Froze (1963), was one of a series published by Monarch Books on similar themes, including Charles L Fontenay's The Day the Oceans Overflowed (1964) and Christopher Anvil's The Day the Machines Stopped (1964). [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 ...