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Monday 15 June 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 15 June 2026
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Yolen, Jane
(1939-2026) US author, partially resident in Scotland, who began publishing poems and articles when still in college, and who first came to notice with books for children, the first of many being Pirates in Petticoats (1963). Of her circa 460 titles, many of which won awards in her field, most were for children (see listing below for some of these), many of them being picture books for younger children; most of her adult fiction, of which she wrote relatively little, was ...
Foon, Dennis
(1951- ) US-born playwright and author, in Canada from 1973, where he became well-known for his plays for older children; of sf interest is the Longlight Legacy sequence, comprising The Dirt Eaters (2003), Freewalker (2004) and The Keeper's Shadow (2007), a Young Adult family drama set in a Ruined Earth-like landscape (though this venue may be a ...
Stroyar, J N
(? - ) US physicist and author, resident in Germany; her Children's War sequence – comprising The Children's War (2001), which won the Sidewise Award for 2001, A Change of Regime (2004) and Becoming Them: As Once in a Dream (2017) – is set in a Hitler Wins Alternate History version of ...
Collectible Miniatures Game
Term used to describe a form of Wargame which uses miniatures collectible in the manner of a Collectible Card Game (see also Collectibles). Thus the figures are sold in packs, some of which contain rare items distributed at random; this practice encourages the purchase of multiple packs. Figures are sold fully assembled and painted, in contrast to traditional ...
Space Elevator
An increasingly popular item of sf Transportation hardware since its introduction to the genre by the near-simultaneous appearance of Arthur C Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise (1979) and Charles Sheffield's The Web Between the Worlds (1979; exp 1989). The space elevator's basic concept is simply that of a tethered "skyhook" cable – fixed at ...
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 ...