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Friday 13 March 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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Williams, Phillip B
(1986- ) US teacher, poet and author whose first novel Ours (2024) takes place mostly in the eponymous quasi-magical Polder (see Utopia; Zone), founded in the 1830s near St Louis, Missouri, initially as a refuge for freed or escaped slaves (see Race in SF). Enemies attempting to reach Ours find themselves disoriented in the surrounding forest [for Into the Woods here and ...
Sterling, Bruce
(1954- ) US essayist, editor and author whose first published sf was a short story, "Man-Made Self", in an anthology of Texan sf, Lone Star Universe (anth 1976) edited by Geo W Proctor and Steven Utley. His first novel, Involution Ocean (1977), is a memoir of the baroque adventures and moral education of a young man who joins the crew of a dustwhaler, a ship that sails upon a ...
Soldier
Film (1998). Warner Brothers pictures in association with Morgan Creek, JW Productions, and Impact Pictures. Directed by Paul W S Anderson. Written by David Webb Peoples. Cast includes Gary Busey, Jason Isaacs, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen and Kurt Russell. 99 minutes. Colour. / Expectations were high for this lavishly budgeted followup to Blade Runner (1982), scripted by that film's co-writer and set, ...
North, Rick
A House Name used for the Young Astronauts Shared-World sf series created for the Young Astronaut Council. Margaret Wander Bonanno, S N Lewitt and John Peel are all contributors to this sequence. [DRL]
Campbell, Marilyn
(1948- ) US author whose loose Innerworld romantic Space Opera sequence beginning with Pyramid of Dreams (1992) is set in the Hollow Earth within our planet from where it obscurely dominates life on the surface. Romances and intrigues ricochet back and forth. There is considerable Sex. The pattern is continued in the subsequent Innerworld Affairs sequence ...
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 ...