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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Iron Maiden
English heavy metal band formed in 1975 by bassist Stephen Harris (1956- ) and characterized by very loud, fast guitar work and the banshee vocals of lead singer Bruce Dickinson (1958- ). The band select promiscuously from established texts as premises for their songs, adapting many novels and (especially) films from war-story, mystery, historical, noir and sf genres. The latter, often inflected via a persistent interest in Satanism and occult ...
Mason, Colin
(1926-2020) New Zealand-born Australian journalist, politician – Senator for New South Wales 1977-1987 – and author whose Near Future sf novel, Hostage (23 July-3 August 1973 Melbourne Sun; 1973), sets the beginning of World War Three in Israel and its climax in Australia. The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe (2003; rev vt ...
Lamport, Richard Fifield
(1885-1943) UK author of Veeni the Master: "The Story of a Dream": A Romance (1912), a tale in which fantasy and sf topoi crudely intersect as humanity faces the End of the World after a Comet strikes (see Disaster), but a remnant are saved through the ministrations of the eponymous Veeni, who seems to hold a Secret Master brief over ...
Giesy, J U
(1877-1947) US physiotherapist, screenwriter and Pulp-magazine writer, author of many stories, most not sf, in Argosy and All-Story Weekly 1914-1934. He began to publish sf with the Utopian sf tale "In 2112" in The Cavalier for 10 August 1912, written with his frequent collaborator, the Utah lawyer Junius B ...
Lovelace, Ada
The name by which UK mathematician and Computer theorist Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) is normally and conveniently known; daughter of Lord Byron. Lovelace was raised by her mother from infancy, gaining from Anne Noel (1792-1860) a precocious interest and intensive education in Mathematics, accompanied by a growing competence in other languages, as revealed in the recent ...
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 ...