SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Monday 13 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.
Site updated on 6 January 2025
Sponsor of the day: Conversation 2023
Shelby, Ashley
(1977- ) US journalist and author whose first novel, the nonfantastic South Pole Station (2017), is set in contemporary Antarctica. She is of sf interest for Muri (2019 chap), a novella which reconfigures Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno" (October-December 1855 Putnam's Monthly Magazine). "Muri" is the leader's name in A Narrative of Voyages and Travels, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres ...
Murray, Will
Working name of US author William Patrick Murray (1953- ), who has shown an interest throughout his career in pulp Superheroes like Doc Savage, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap); as Kenneth Robeson he began a new sequence of Doc Savage adventures comprising Python Isle (1991), White Eyes ...
Leydenfrost, A
Working name of American artist Alexander Leydenfrost (1888-1961), also credited simply as Leydenfrost, who was born in Hungary as Baron Sandor Leidenfrost; upon moving to America at the age of 34, he Americanized his first name to Alexander and changed the spelling of his last name. Trained as an artist in his native land, Leydenfrost emigrated to America in 1923 along with three friends, Peter Lorre, Bela Lugosi, and Paul Lucas, who went on to successful ...
Homeworld
Videogame (1999). Relic Entertainment (RE). Platforms: Win. / Homeworld is a Real Time Strategy game, noted for its innovative use of three-dimensional space and its involving linear storyline (see Interactive Narrative). The setting is Space Opera; the Kushan race, evicted from their homeworld long ago after losing a war against the ...
Downing, Paula E
Working name of US attorney, municipal judge and author Paula Elaine Downing King (1951-2017), who wrote also as Paula King and under the pseudonyms P K McAllister and Diana Marcellas; she was formerly married to and divorced from T Jackson King. Downing began publishing work of genre interest with "Loni's Promise" for Discoveries in 1989. Her first novel, Mad Roy's Light (1990) as Paula King, is an sf adventure featuring a human woman who ...
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 ...