SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 12 July 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 7 July 2026
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Internet
As with Computers, sf representations of the internet have tended to lag somewhat behind reality – a noted example being the Far-Future galactic communications board in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), which precisely and wittily reproduces the format and occasional incoherence of contemporary Usenet newsgroup discussions (then a major and now a fading aspect of the ...
Webb, William Thomas
(1918-2006) UK author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Escape from Plenty" (February 1958 Nebula) as by W T Webb; he wrote a moderate number of Space Operas for Robert Hale Limited, some of them involving Time Travel and travel into other Dimensions; The Fate of the Phral (1980), ...
Turkey
A full entry for sf in Turkey must await a contributor fluent in its language and able to report from the inside on the development of the genre there, and on untranslated works. The best known Proto SF author from this region is Lucian of Samosata in what is now modern Turkey. Little Turkish sf has been translated; relevant authors given full entries in this encyclopedia are the Turkish-Armenia-born US Gregory ...
Beck, Alan F
(1944- ) US artist best known for his wryly humorous, usually small paintings, prints and originals of which are hugely popular at conventions; he has done relatively little Illustration work, mainly for the magazine Space and Time, although there are also some book covers, the first being for the Fantasy Pine Tree Wind (2002) by A L Neff. He received his art ...
McEwan, Ian
(1948- ) UK author who began writing material of interest to the fields of the fantastic with "Solid Geometry" in The New Review for July 1974 (also February 1975 Fantastic), in which the protagonist's fascination with the "impossible" geometry (see Dimensions; Mathematics) suggested in the title drags his wife (post-coitally) into an almost literal ...
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 ...