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Friday 18 July 2025
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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Williams, Tess
(1954-2025) UK-born teacher, editor and author, in Australia for many years, there receiving a degree in literature from Curtin University and an MA in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. She began publishing work of genre interest with "The Padwan Affair" in She's Fantastical (anth 1995) edited by Judith Raphael Buckrich and Lucy Sussex. Of sf interest are two novels: Map of Power (1996), set mostly in a ...
Blasim, Hassan
Working name of Iraqi filmmaker and author Hasan Balāsim (1973- ), in Finland from 2004; his film work was done under the name Ouazad Osman. His short fiction has been assembled in at least three collections beginning with The Madman of Freedom Square (trans Jonathan Wright, coll 2008), almost all of his work dealing with the surrealistic tortures inflicted upon his native land since the British invasion of 1914, often as filtered through the diaspora ...
Gann, W D
(1878-1955) US finance trader and author, deeply involved in prognosticating the market, applying mathematics and astrology in his attempts (financially successful) to predict share prices. Most of his nonfiction dealt not only with stockmarket predictions but with the future in general (see Futures Studies). He is of sf interest for The Tunnel Thru' the Air; Or, Looking Back from 1940 (1927), a Near Future tale ...
Mister Mystery
US Comic (1951-1954). Stanley P Morse. 19 issues. Artists include Bernard Baily, Eugene Hughes, Tony Mortellaro and Basil Wolverton. Script writers include Bruce Hamilton and Basil Wolverton. 36 pages per issue, usually comprising 4-5 long strips and a short text story. / Most stories are introduced by Mister Mystery, a formally attired gentleman in a domino mask with a fondness for puns. His smugness and tendency to insert himself into the tales is an ...
Dashner, James
(1972- ) US author whose work has been restricted to three Young Adult series, the first of which, The Jimmy Fincher Saga, beginning with A Door in the Woods (2003), is fantasy. The 13th Reality sequence, beginning with The Journal of Curious Letters (2008), sets its young protagonist the sf-coloured task of protecting the vast number of Alternate Worlds created ...
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 ...