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Saturday 15 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 ...
Todd, W
(? -? ) UK author known only for one title, The City Moated and Walled (1930), which describes the attempted survival of the eponymous Ruritanian garden-like moated City of Granaloni, whose isolation almost qualifies it as a Lost World, against the terrors of a potentially invasive modern world. [JC]
Wells, Hal K
(1899-1979) US author, in active service during World War One, who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Brass Key" in Weird Tales for February 1929. Much of his sf work – like Zehru of Xollar (February 1932 Astounding; 2008 ebook) – was Space Opera for Pulp journals, with a tendency to the lurid. Some of his ...
Thompson, William Mort
(? -1898) UK bibliophile and author whose A Very Odd Dream [for full title see Checklist] (1883 chap) recounts a vision of the Near Future in which members of his club, the Sette of Odd Volumes, are instrumental in defeating Russia in a Future War conducted between 1930 and 1940. [JC]
Hobb, Robin
Pseudonym of US author Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden (1952- ), who published all her work before 1995 under the working name Megan Lindholm, almost everything that she wrote under this name being fantasy; as Hobb she has written nothing else besides fantasy. After some early children's fiction, she began to publish work of genre interest as Megan Lindholm with "Bones for Dulath" in Amazons! (anth 1979) edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. The characters from ...
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 ...