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Wednesday 12 August 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 10 August 2026
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Crowley, John
(1942-2026) US teacher and author who also worked in documentary films and television for some time beginning in 1966. His sf novels have had a considerable impact on the field, and his fantasies established him as a figure whose work courteously but deeply stretched the boundaries of genre literature. / His first novel, The Deep (1975), is set on a flat discworld resting on a pillar that extends beyond measurement into the circumambient galactic Deep, in which very few stars ...
Lancour, Gene
Working name of Gene Louis Fisher (1947- ), US author of the Sword-and-Sorcery Dirshan, the God-Killer sequence featuring a barbarian warrior strenuously in the service of a goddess: The Lerios Mecca (1973), The War Machines of Kalinth (1977), Sword for the Empire (1978) and The Maneaters of Cascalon (1979). Lancour's next book was sf: The Globes of Llarum ...
Riley, Brett
(1970- ) US teacher and author whose first novel Comanche (2020), is a Western involving the century-old ghost of a gunslinger. His sf tale, Lord of Order (2021), set in a post-Technology Ruined Earth version of a balkanized America, confronts the "Lord of Order" of New Orleans with a crisis of survival. [JC]
Mason, Gregory
(1889-1968) US doctor and author whose novel, The Green Gold of Yucatan (1926), is a Lost Race tale, and whose sf Dystopia, The Golden Archer: A Satirical Novel of 1975 (1956), is a Satire depicting an America suffering under regimented, McCarthy-like bigotry and Religious strife. This author should not be confused with Gregory Mason, a pseudonym ...
Mercy Point
US tv series (1998-1999). Columbia TriStar Television/Mandalay Television for UPN Network. Created by Trey Callaway, Milo Frank and David Simkins. Produced by Brent V Friedman, Scott Sanders, Deborah Starr Siebel and others. Directors include Lee Bonner, Michael Katleman and Joe Napolitano. Writers include Gary Glasberg, Jonathan Robert Kaplan and Simkins. Cast includes Trey Callaway, Maria del Mar, Jordan Lund, Brian McNamara, Joe Morton, Julia Pennington and Alexandra Wilson. Eight ...
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 ...