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Sunday 19 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.
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Brown, Dale
(1956- ) US former military pilot and author of Technothrillers with sufficient sf content to be of some interest in this context, beginning with the Near Future Flight of the Old Dog (1987), in which Yankee seat-of-the-pants derring-do combats an insidious Communist enemy, and which introduces Brown's continuing pilot hero, Patrick McLanahan; in Day of the Cheetah (1989) ...
MacTyre, Paul
Pseudonym of Scottish author and historian Robin James Adam (1924-1999), for 40 years a lecturer in medieval history at St Andrews University. His best-known novel is his first, Midge (1962; vt Doomsday, 1999 1963), a literate Post-Holocaust story in which a new form of life threatens to take over from the remnants of outmoded, destructive humanity. Further novels are the John Buchan-like ...
Drink Tank, The
US Fanzine edited by Chris Garcia (some issues co-edited by James Bacon), published from California, 2005-current; electronic format. / From relatively humble beginnings as an outlet for Garcia's own writing, The Drink Tank has become (in part due to its remorseless frequency) a notable fanzine of the twenty-first century; it won the fanzine Hugo in 2011 after being nominated in every year from 2007 to 2010. While still featuring ...
Whiteside, Edward
(? - ) US author of the Near Future A Warning from Mars (1948 chap), set on Mars, here known as Amkonia, where free enterprise has flourished until a New-Deal-like socialist Dystopia takes over and ruins the planet; the Satire is heavy, and an inserted history of freed slaves, here known as Boogaloos, is intensely unpleasant. ...
Sims, Alan
(? - ) Author, presumably UK, of the novels Phoinix (1928) and Anna Perenna (1930). Phoinix reworks Greek Mythology, not only retelling the saga of Achilles in the Trojan War but bringing in Hercules, the Argonauts and the poet Homeros (see Homer), who here exaggerates Achilles' rage and violence for dramatic effect. Anna Perenna (1930) is a broad ...
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 ...