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Tuesday 17 February 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 16 February 2026
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Dynamic Science Fiction
US Pulp magazine published by Columbia Publications; edited by R A W Lowndes. Six issues, December 1952-January 1954. Much of the fiction was unremarkable, though it did run Lester del Rey's sf thriller "I Am Tomorrow" (December 1952) and the short novel The Duplicated Man (August 1953; 1959) by James Blish and Michael Sherman (a pseudonym for Lowndes). Of more lasting significance ...
Collas, Phil
Working name of Australian author Felix Edward Collas (1907-1989), whose only sf work, The Inner Domain (October 1935 Amazing; 1989 chap), is a kind of Lost Race tale, in which aboriginal Australians, millennia ago, discovered relics of an ancient civilization Underground, which they are still inhabiting in 1981. [JC]
Wilson, G Willow
(1982- ) US author whose first works were Graphic Novels, beginning with the Young Adult Cairo: A Graphic Novel (graph 2007), a tale which incorporates aspects of her own life story – she converted to Islam while teaching in Cairo during 2003 – into contemporary Urban Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links ...
Manchess, Gregory
(1955- ) US painter, illustrator and author, active from the late 1970s. His work, which has appeared widely, is conspicuously painterly; though he is entirely capable of creating dynamic "action" Superheroes flexing their musculature in the usual fashion, his landscape-dominated vistas, with their traditional (if heightened) use of perspective, are perhaps more reminiscent of the work of a similarly painterly illustrator like N C Wyeth ...
Francis, Richard
(1945- ) UK academic and author, who added to some books an empty middle-initial "H" to distinguish himself from Dick Francis (1920-2010), the thriller writer. His first novel, Blackpool Vanishes (1979), tells the quirky, extremely English story of what happens when microscopic Aliens kidnap the town of Blackpool. In Whispering Gallery (1984) the Invention of a link between bacteria and ...
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 ...